Sep 22, 2009

Brandwise and GHTA Release Gift and Home Industry Data

Grand Rapids, Mich. — The Gift and Home Trade Association, the industry’s leading trade association, and Brandwise, an application service provider well known in the industry for its cutting-edge software solutions, has announced the release of the Brandwise Gift and Home Show Indexes for the summer 2009 Dallas, Atlanta, Chicago and Los Angeles markets.

With a challenging economy in mind, independent retailers are making more changes than ever. The Brandwise Gift and Home Show Index data indicates that retailer buyers are staying closer to home, visiting fewer shows during Summer 2009.

According to all Indexes, retail orders and order dollars from in-territory retailers, represent a growing percentage of overall sales against that of out-of-territory businesses when comparing this year over the past two. Additionally, the number of orders placed, order dollars, and average order sizes were down over last year across both all markets.

The Brandwise Gift and Home Show Index identifies emerging sales and traffic trends within the industry and allows vendors and sales agencies to effectively gauge their performance at shows, providing a benchmark for success. Aggregate sales information from several hundred vendors, comprise the Dallas and Atlanta Indexes making them statistically relevant.

“For years, the industry has requested relevant data for review in order to make wise business decisions and to identify trends in the gift and home industry,” says Diane Carnevale Jones, executive director of the Gift and Home Trade Association. “The Brandwise Gift and Home Show Indices provide vendors, sales agencies and sales associates with information relevant to their businesses — information that is sound, viable, and useful.”

Comprehensive Index reports, including pie charts and graphs – are made available from Brandwise, by ordering a GHTA subscription to this revolutionary data. The subscription includes a year’s worth of reports disseminated after each major tradeshow season.

This is the second season of data released by the Brandwise Gift and Home Show Index. The first series of Indexes was released following the Winter 2009 markets and included data from the Dallas, Atlanta, Las Vegas, Chicago and Los Angeles markets. Data reported in the individual market index subscriptions include:

• percentage of total order count year-over-year
• average order size
• total revenue percent year-over-year
• unique buyer percentage year-over-year
• trending of suppliers within the index, up, down and nominal change

Subscribers invited to sign up for twice-annual tutorials with Todd Litzman
For those subscribers that would be interested in learning more about how to understand and apply the data for their own business, Brandwise president, Todd Litzman, will be providing tutorials via a conference call directly following the winter and summer tradeshow seasons. The Index is free for vendors and sales agencies who are both GHTA members and qualified Brandwise clients. Annual subscriptions to the Brandwise Gift and Home Index start at $250.00.

For more information on the Index, how to subscribe, and additional pricing details please visit the GHTA website at www.giftandhome.org/cms/Home/Show_Index.php, or contact Brandwise at (877) 435-3225, ext 2 or visit either www.brandwise.com or www.bwconnect.com .

About the GIFT AND HOME Trade Association:
GHTA is the gift and home industry’s non-profit professional trade association formed to help vendors, sales agencies and industry affiliates work together to improve relationships. GHTA’s mission is to lead and transform the gift and home industry to ensure its long-term health and viability. GHTA has four major initiatives: to educate sales professionals; to understand and educate the industry on opportunities for technological efficiencies; to support and cultivate the industry’s independent retailers; and to understand and educate the industry on showroom/trade show costs, statistics, schedules, opportunities and preferences. GHTA can be reached by email at info@ghta.net. For more information on the GIFT AND HOME Trade Association visit www.giftandhome.org.

About Brandwise:
Brandwise is an Application Service Provider (ASP) delivering hosted software solutions to manufacturers and their sales channels within targeted industries. The Brandwise product suite integrates a series of industry-specific tools that help manufacturers and sales reps sell more products to their customers, combining Sales Force Automation technology, Business Intelligence tools, Decision Support and Customer Relationship Management (CRM to enhance the coordination and communication of information between manufacturers and their sales channel). In the near future Brandwise will also add e-Commerce to their product offering. For more information on Brandwise visit www.brandwise.com or call (877) 435-3225.