ENK International’s children’s club trade show is growing like a weed.
The show, which started in March 2000, is now the largest children’s trade show out there, offering apparel, home products, accessories and beauty products geared to children from infants to tweens.
“We started this show when a group of children’s representatives came to us with the idea,” said Elyse Kroll, president of ENK International. “They had visited some of our other shows. The initial problem we had was that these people came to us in November, asking for a show in January.”
Kroll said pulling together a show in just two months would have been impossible. So, ENK launched it in March instead.
“We had 36 collections set up at the Manhattan Center here, and it literally blew us away,” she said. “Within two years, we had about 800 booths at the show.”
The Children’s Club show continues to grow, and it now takes place at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. At the last show, which was held March 12-14, there were 928 collections on display. The next show will take place in August, although the dates have yet to be finalized.