Toy Fair Turns a Page
After splitting the show, the association is now mulling a new location
By Heidi Genoist -- Tradeshow Week, 3/14/2005
In early 2003, the Toy Industry Assn. announced it was launching a new event, the American Intl. Fall Toy Show, to satisfy market needs left unmet by the February American Intl. TOY FAIR.
Just after the two-year anniversary of that decision comes another one, potentially even more momentous. After a century in New York, the TIA may be moving out. A series of converging factors, including the sale of the Intl. Toy Center to a residential developer and the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center, have some in the TIA convinced that its shows may be better off elsewhere.
Complex industry dynamics last year led the toy association to split the TOY FAIR into two events. It was a bold move, but one most agree was good, said Maria Weiskott, editor in chief of Playthings magazine (like Tradeshow Week, a Reed Business Information publication).
The circumstances now leading the TIA to consider moving one or both shows out of New York are equally complicated. This time, Weiskott noted, with an entire industry having grown up around the 102-year-old institution that includes not only the tradeshow, but the city's toy district, the issue stands to be much more contentious.
TIA announced its pending move following meetings for members and discussions between the board and tradeshow committee held during TOY FAIR Feb. 20¨C23.
The show, ranked 49th on the most recent TSW 200, this year featured 1,320 exhibiting companies covering 322,813 net square feet of exhibit space at the Javits. That compared with 1,230 exhibitors covering 330,000 net sq. ft. in 2004. Attendance numbers for 2005 were not available at press time, but TIA officials said they expected an 8- to 9-percent increase over last year's 22,332 professionals.
Slight growth isn't bad, considering the association in 2003 created two events out of what had been the traditional TOY FAIR.
Socioeconomic dynamics have created two major retail sectors with distinct buying cycles. Mass merchandisers, like Wal-Mart and Target, want a closed, appointment-only, showroom-style event in the fall, where they can order products for the following year's holiday season and beyond. Smaller specialty retailers, who can't leave their stores to visit a tradeshow until after the holiday season, prefer to shop for a coming year's product in an open expo environment during the first quarter.
This bifurcation is also partly behind the emergence of the American Specialty Toy Retailing Assn., founded in the Midwest in 1992, whose annual gathering has grown into the ASTRA Marketplace. The association expects about 200 specialty retailers at this year's May 12¨C15 event at the Royal Pacific Resort in Orlando, and has incorporated a small exhibition of 8¡ä¡Á10¡äs.
The TIA, meanwhile, has gone through two cycles of having both the Fall Toy Show and the winter TOY FAIR ¡ª and deemed the change a success.
"It worked," said Barry Shapiro, chair of TIA's trade-show committee and CEO of Global Sourcing in Minnetonka, Minn. "The manufacturers thanked us, because they had to move up their production timetables, which meant a better schedule, and the retailers said we delivered (product) far better than they thought we could."
Shapiro was part of a TIA delegation that spent a couple years visiting divisional merchandise managers to ask, first, whether they still wanted a tradeshow at all, and second, if they did, how and when they wanted it to be.
"We were concerned about the October event cannibalizing the February show, and quite frankly, it did," said TIA President Thomas P. Conley. "But we have two separate audiences with two separate needs, and we're serving both of them."
Numbers-wise, TOY FAIR has held steady since 2002. The exhibition has shrunk by less than 100 sq. ft. during that time, and the number of buyers has risen each year except 2003, when the two-show idea was introduced.
To keep the February TOY FAIR growing and relevant, the TIA plans to expand it from a show of playthings for kids into a marketplace of youth lifestyle, incorporating sporting goods, music, books, and other products for older children.
"Twenty-five years ago, kids through preteen-age purchased toys," Conley explained. "But now, with video games, pressure on early development, both parents working, games being taken out of school curricula ¡ª the notion of play is being assaulted from all fronts ... We are reaching out across many categories to get more buyers to come to the show and provide value to our exhibitors."
The Fall Toy Show has had a modest beginning with around 30 exhibitors occupying 6,000 sq. ft. of showroom space each year. Although Shapiro described the show as a hit, he acknowledged there are some challenges.
Staged in the Intl. Toy Center and surrounding spaces in New York's toy district, the fall show offers little revenue-generating opportunity to the TIA, which neither owns nor occupies any showrooms, yet assumes the cost of managing the event.
To make matters worse, the association and ITC have had a problematic relationship over the years.
ITC owner Wein-Malcolm recently decided to sell the building to a development company that will convert it to condominiums. The TIA expects the deal to close within a month, displacing exhibitors who occupied toy mart space during both TOY FAIR and the Fall Toy Show.
The TIA was considering options to move the Fall Toy Show even before the news of the sale. Too few mass market buyers come from the Northeast to justify the difficulty of keeping the show in New York.
The original plan was to move in '06, but with the sale of the ITC, it may happen this year.
The Dallas Market Center has emerged as the leading candidate for the new location. Shapiro said the city's proposal would allow the TIA to profit from and control the space, offering cocktail parties, free baggage check and use of showrooms for a range of lease periods ¡ª things it could never do in New York.
As for TOY FAIR, it will definitely be held at the Javits in February 2006, but Atlanta and Orlando are in the running for '07 and beyond.
Conley said the TIA will have on its hands exhibitors displaced by the closure of toy district showrooms, and would like to put them all in one floor of same-quality, contiguous exhibit space, rather than stacking them in ballrooms and meeting space as do other groups that have outgrown the Javits ¡ª at least until the facility's proposed expansion is completed in 2009.
"I've been through a couple expansions in my career," Conley added, "and you do the best you can, but there are issues."
The TIA expects to make decisions on both shows by the end of May.
So, what does the toy industry think?
While there are some who believe the annual gathering belongs in New York, Weiskott said, others have accepted that "the times have changed. They're in a business that's evolved a lot over the last 10 years, and they understand that the show has to evolve too."
Still, she noted four important reasons why TOY FAIR is in New York: tradition, media access, a high percentage of East Coast buyers and easy international access.
The TIA has appointed a subcommittee to seek other showroom space to replace what will be lost by the ITC sale.
