Textile Show: the Next Generation

The largest gift tradeshow in the country, George Little Management's New York Intl. Gift Fair, is about to get a little bigger. But the growth will come at the expense of the firm's New York Home Textiles Show.

GLM is reconfiguring its home textiles exhibits, folding high-end products into the At Home division of the Gift Fair and launching a separate event for the mass market, Global Home Textiles, which will collocate with its Gourmet Housewares Show (which, in turn, collocates with Reed Exhibitions' Natl. Hardware Show).

After a 14-year run, the New York Home Textiles Show, as such, will be no more. It is the culmination of changes begun in 2005, when GLM changed the Home Textile Show's dates from March and October to January and August.

Originally, the company had planned to keep the textile show distinct, holding it at the Metropolitan Pavilion, while the gift show would be at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center of New York. Instead, part of the textiles show will join the gift show at the Javits and Pier 94.

"We look at it as stratification," said Alan Steel, GLM executive vice president. "The market is moving in that direction."

Steel said home textiles — which include mainly fabric products for the home, such as table and bed linens, drapes and rugs, as well as small furniture (no case goods) — are increasingly polarized into luxury and commodity items.

"The commodity market is served by big box stores and chains, which are buying in bulk, but the luxury stores are dealing with a much higher price," he explained. "They used to deal together, when there was a middle market linking them, but that middle market's being squeezed out. Now, it's either driven by volume and becomes low-priced, or luxury and becomes high-priced."

Regardless of a brand's country of origin, Steel added, most home textiles are now produced in China and India. "The American textile industry is no longer," he said, as U.S. brands now source their manufacturing overseas.

This shift has affected the market's buying cycle, part of the reason GLM changed the timing of the Home Textile Show to coincide with the Gift Fair.

The changes also drove GLM to put Global Home Textiles, catering to the commodity segment of the market, with the Gourmet Housewares Show, because the combined event with the Hardware Show covers more of the value end of the market.

Last year in Las Vegas, the Gourmet Housewares Show drew 455 exhibitors and 11,000 professional attendees to a 119,000 net square foot showfloor. This year, the combined event is scheduled May 8–10 at Orlando's Orange County Convention Center.

At the other end of the spectrum from commodity items, luxury home textiles consist mainly of European brands. Meredith Schwartz, business editor for Gifts and Decorative Accessories magazine (like TSW, a Reed Business Information publication), said it made sense to put high-end home textiles with a gift show, because of the way the lifestyle trend is redefining contemporary gift stores.

Rather than focusing solely on product categories, more and more stores are letting the tastes and habits of their target customers determine the merchandise they carry. An example is Anthropologie, a clothing store that carries stationery, books and other gifts that appeal to shoppers who like its clothes. Anthropologie also carries small furniture — and home textiles.

GLM launched the New York Home Textiles Show in 1992. In 2006, the March version of the show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center of New York was expected to span 60,000 net sq. ft. and attract 377 exhibitors and 5,300 professional attendees (show management did not report final show numbers for TSW's quarterly report of statistics). The October version of the show at the Javits was expected to fill 50,000 net sq. ft. and draw 350 exhibitors and 8,000 home textiles professionals.

GLM's semiannual New York Intl. Gift Fair was Nos. 23 and 25 on the most recent Tradeshow Week 200. Last year's January edition filled 647,861 net sq. ft., down from the previous year's 670,520 net sq. ft. Professional attendance, however, was up, from 41,000 in 2005 to 43,000 in 2006. In the same period, the slightly smaller August Gift Fair grew in both net square footage and professional attendance.

The firm expects the changes to add about 100 companies, former exhibitors in the home textiles show, to the At Home division of the upcoming Gift Fair, scheduled Aug. 11–15 in New York. By next year, GLM hopes, that the number of home textiles exhibitors will double.

Other gift show organizers have been tinkering with their gift and home textiles exhibits as well.

The World Market Center launched a gift division within its Las Vegas Market last August, and WMC officials said they planned to continue expanding it.

Across the aisle from Vegas Gift & Accessory, the name of the division, was Messe Frankfurt's Interior Lifestyle USA, a distinct show within the Las Vegas Market that was meant to be a U.S. extension of the German organizer's successful European shows, Ambiente, for interior furnishings, and Heimtextil, for home textiles.

David Audrain, president of Messe Frankfurt's U.S. operations, agreed with GLM's Steel that the home textiles market has undergone dramatic changes in recent years.

"Manufacturing has essentially disappeared from North America, and the exhibitors that are strong in Heimtextil keep moving further and further East, with China taking a more dominant role," Audrain said. "While there are still some very strong and great American buyers of our European brands — and we try to bring more and more of those to Interior Lifestyle — they have to source their production elsewhere."

Audrain said he's had some success with bringing to Las Vegas "nice, high-end bedding sets and duvets and so forth, and those sorts of Italian and French styles are really our target audience. We're not trying to bring the mass market, although we do have some of that too."

He said Messe Frankfurt plans to keep Interior Lifestyle with the Las Vegas Market: "The last three editions, we've seen growth in quality and volume of buyers. ... There's nothing like it in the world. To be partnered with them is valuable to us, and hopefully to them."

GLM isn't worried about the competition that may be coming from Las Vegas or elsewhere in the home textiles market (AmericasMart in Atlanta is launching a fine linens section this year).

Steel said, "Others may try to take advantage and try to launch shows in those categories, but there's not an excess of supply. ... The American textile manufacturing capacity just disappeared, and everyone had to adjust. We are responding to the marketplace."