DALLAS — The Dallas Market Center wants to make the thrill of the hunt a little easier for buyers in 2006.
The giant wholesale complex plans to launch two temporary shows that are merchandised by product category for a more efficient shopping experience.
“The buyers have less time and have to make tighter choices on inventory,” said Bill Winsor, president and chief executive officer of the DMC. “We want to create destination neighborhoods focused on specific categories of products.”
The biggest new temporary show will launch in January during the biannual gift show. Called Finds, it’s a gift, home and fashion exposition featuring 13 categories of merchandise in discrete areas, including accessories, spa products and paper goods.
Finds is expected to take up a massive 500,000 square feet at Market Hall and on the 12th and 13th floors of the World Trade Center. About 100 booths of primarily jewelry and accessories will be situated on 13, near FashionCenterDallas’ permanent accessories showrooms. Finds is scheduled for Jan. 20-23 and June 23-26, to coincide with the biannual gift markets.
“I’ve been at the Market Center for 20 years and I’m shocked at how much the lines have blurred between fashion and gift stores,” said Georgia Davis, executive vice president and manager of Finds. “It’s a growing crossover.”
Finds represents the DMC’s attempt to create a branded show for temporary exhibitors at gift markets. Before, these temporary exhibits were managed by an independent contractor and weren’t coherently arranged.
The second new show for temporary exhibitors is Collections at Scene, a juried collection focusing on misses’ bridge lines that will be introduced at the fall fashion market, March 30-April 2. Like Scene, which focuses on contemporary resources, Collections will be held during fashion markets in August and October on the 13th floor of the World Trade Center, near the escalators. The first Collections show is expected to have 35 to 40 booths.
“It’s an area and a size and group that I think were underserved — products that appeal to a woman who is not a pencil,” said Peg Canter, vice president of trade shows.
“This gives us a chance to merchandise these collections like they hang at retail and allows for synergy between manufacturers,” Morris said.
Related Articles
You May Also Like
The DMC intends to get closer to retailers with the launch of a quarterly custom magazine, InStore, that’s full of professional guidance without advertising.
“It’s a great way to reach customers and give them advice from experts in their fields,” Morris said. “It’s a tutorial for retailers.”
“We’ve talked about this for quite some time,” added Winsor. “There are very few tools out there for small stores, yet their quest for information is as great as major stores.”
InStore’s first issue in October numbered 32 pages and included such features as “Growing a Healthy Margin” and “Battling Return Fraud.” Distributed to a mailing list of 60,000 retailers specializing in hard and soft goods, InStore is edited by Laura Dumas, the DMC’s director of buyer communications.
Attracting new buyers to market continues to be a priority for the DMC. Its four-member retail development team has been visiting specialty retailers nationwide for about seven years, and in January it will begin focusing on stores from the Rocky Mountains to the Southeast. Target states include Missouri, Oklahoma, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Mississippi, Louisiana and Florida, and there are about six to eight significant retail prospects in each metro area.
“We’ve had a very favorable response to that,” Winsor said. “It’s a lot better than direct mail. Our team can see what the store looks like and can put together a buying program that makes sense for them. They can suggest lines that the buyer might want to look at.”
Looking ahead, the DMC is considering shifting its fashion market days in 2007 to a Sunday-to-Wednesday schedule instead of the current format, which runs Thursday to Sunday. The action comes in response to buyers who have said they’d rather be in their stores on their busiest days — Thursday through Saturday, Winsor said.
To make the decision, the company surveyed retailers by e-mail and held meetings with tenants and manufacturers in Dallas, New York and Los Angeles. The feedback strongly favored the change, Winsor said. He and Morris plan to discuss the date shift with officials from other market centers before making a final decision about the dates.
In addition, the DMC complex is again in expansion mode. On the heels of the $20 million construction of FashionCenterDallas, which opened last year, the DMC has broken ground on another $20 million development — a four-story addition to the Trade Mart to house two floors of lighting showrooms and two levels of parking. It’s scheduled to open in January 2007.
“Lighting is booming,” Winsor said. “There are a lot of housing redos and commercial projects, like hotels. It’s our fastest-growing segment.”