Exuberant Order-Writing Seen at Las Vegas Market

By Lorrie Baumann

The organizers of Las Vegas Market are bubbling over in their enthusiasm for the performance of the most recent market session, which started on April 11 and runs through the 15th, after being postponed from January due to the COVID-19 pandemic. “The last two weeks, daily, we could feel the momentum building up,” said Bob Maricich, the Chief Executive Officer of International Market Centers, which owns Las Vegas Market as well as Atlanta Market. He noted that many buyers waited until the last minute to register for the market, but then decided to come to Las Vegas. “There’s just an unprecedented desire to get in front of people face to face,” he said.

He noted that federal air traffic counts have begun to rebound as the pandemic recedes, with the Transportation Safety Administration reporting that over the last few days, as Las Vegas Market was opening, passenger numbers were at about 55 percent of what they had been on the same dates in 2019. “People are willing to get on an airplane and travel more and more, and as more do that, you’re going to see more Market attendance because the underlying demand is there,” Maricich said. “It’s like old home week.”

“I would say that this feels like the back-to-business market,” added Dorothy Belshaw, International Market Center’s Chief Customer and Marketing Officer, who called the EXPO Center’s opening “a total game-changer in every way” and who noted that, for many of the country’s buyers, this was the first time they’ve been able to attend a trade show since the country shut down in March of 2020.

“As of yesterday [April 12], which was the second full day, attendance has tripled the total summer 2020 attendance. Based on the performance this April, we feel that we’ll see significant increases again in August,” she said. If that trajectory continues, next January’s event should look pretty much like a normal Winter Las Vegas Market, according to Belshaw.

Market attendees were very focused on the buying they needed to get done, and many who might have made a very leisurely stay at the market are instead packing all of their buying into a couple of days – but order writing during the first two days of the market was both wider and deeper than normal, as many buyers, particularly those dealing in the furniture category, were trying to work around massive supply-chain disruptions to ensure that they’ll have merchandise in their warehouses over the next several months, even if those supply-chain problems continue. “People are not here kicking tires. The people that are here are very, very serious about commerce,” Maricich said. “There’s such a demand for product that if they can get it right now, they want it…. When there’s demand, good things are going to happen, and that’s driving this sense of optimism.”

While traffic during the first two days of the market was at 40 percent of pre-COVID levels, buying power was at 60 to 75 percent of normal pre-pandemic levels, according to Belshaw. “Independents are placing larger and deeper orders to ensure that they continue to have inventory for the next several months,” she said. “This has exceeded expectations, both for the trade show and for the showrooms.”

This was the first trade show at which the new EXPO at World Market Center was open for temporary showrooms. The new facility was built as a public-private partnership between International Market Centers and the city of Las Vegas, and is expected to have a significant economic impact on the local market when it’s operating at full capacity, producing $97 million in annual visitor spending and filling 388,000 hotel room nights over the course of a year. For this market, and after working closely with the city’s health and safety officials, the building was operating at partial capacity, to allow for social distancing, so that instead of the 1,000 temporary booth spaces that are expected to be occupied in future markets, only 200 were there this time. “You walk into this magnificent building, with contactless registration,” Maricich said. “It looks full; it looks vibrant, and then it leads into the permanent showrooms.”

In the buildings housing the permanent showrooms, about 85 percent of the showrooms were open, as opposed to about 55 percent last summer. Most of those still closed were due to the supply-chain disruptions that limited those vendors’ access to products that they could sell, according to both Maricich and Belshaw. “We do expect 100 percent showroom participation for the summer ’21 market,” Belshaw said.

Las Vegas Market’s summer 2021 market is scheduled for August 22 through 26 for the permanent showrooms and the temporary exhibits open August 22 through 25. For 2022, International Market Centers is planning to return to the normal January schedule, with the show open January 23-27. The summer 2022 show is scheduled for July 24-28.