Home Textiles Market Week Successful at Multiple Locations in New York City
White Plains, NY – The recent Home Textiles Market Week lured home textiles retailers, as well as gift and home buyers with interest in better home fashions to New York City, from August 9-16, for what was deemed a cohesive, convenient market.
In total, the Home Textiles Market Week offered buyers access to nearly 500 better home textiles suppliers at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and Passenger Ship Terminal Pier 94, 230 Fifth Avenue and 7 West 34th Street. Participants featured a wide range of mid-to-high-end bed and bath fashions, table linens, kitchen textiles, towels, decorative accessories, area rugs, window treatments and decorative fabrics.
“The Market was 100% successful for buyers and exhibitors alike,” said Penny Sikalis, George Little Management, LLC (GLM) vice president. “This was an efficient, well-received market that provided a depth of better home textiles resources, as well as a breadth of related home merchandise for cross-category buying and selling opportunities.”
NYIGF exhibitors and permanent showroom tenants concurred, citing a high quality of buyer traffic across all market locations, strong order writing from all channels of retail distribution. Retailers also responded positively to the efficiencies created by the concentration of better linen resources.
“The show was off the charts for us, both in terms of positive response and amount of traffic. It was beyond our expectations, said Matteo’s Tanny Esperas. “After being away from the market for four years, the majority of our orders were from new customers, but our existing customers also came back to see us. We wrote orders with major department stores, independent retail boutiques, interior designers and e-commerce and web retailers.”
This sentiment was echoed by representatives from two Italian suppliers – Dea and Missoni Home. “This was our best show ever because of the market’s concentration of high-end linen resources, said Fiona Simon, of Dea. “Our clients were better able to focus, and they sought us out here in our location in the Italian Pavilion.”
Missoni Home’s Elena Carboni added, “We saw a good mix of current and new clients, so we wrote orders from traditional home textiles outlets as well as corporate gift companies and accessory stores. There was also a good geographic mix, with visitors from Florida, California, New York, Carolinas and the Midwest.”
Participating showrooms also saw a wide range of traffic during Home Textiles Market Week. “With the addition of leading home fashions vendors, such as American Century Home, Dan River, Extreme Linen, Royale Linens Inc., Surya Rugs and Textrade, we had a critical mass of key resources for home textiles retailers,” said Chris Collins, vice president and general manager of 7 West New York. “Traffic was strong from all of the major textiles retailers as well as specialty gift and home retailers seeking products to complement their merchandise mix.”
“The combination of Home Textiles Market Week with New York Gift Week brought additional traffic and – buying opportunities – to our tenants,” said Jane Gural-Senders, executive director of 230 Fifth Avenue, “A number of textiles companies reported having their strongest show in years.”
The cooperation between tradeshow and showroom building management began with GLM’s integration of its former New York Home Textiles Show into the At Home division of the New York International Gift Fair (NYIGF). This coalescing and repositioning of mid-to-high-end resources allowed some 100 high-end bed, bath, linen and home accessories companies to be featured together at the Javits Center. GLM plans to continue At Home’s expansion and refinement with future integration of better home textiles now located throughout other NYIGF divisions including Accent on Design, Handmade and At Home at Pier 94.
The permanent showrooms followed suit, expanding their existing base of better home textiles tenants to include newcomers to the market. Together, the three entities featured nearly 500 mid-to-high-end home textiles suppliers, as well as onsite buyer amenities at each venue, a combined market directory listing all participants, discounted travel and hotel rates and a full schedule of educational seminars, after-hours events and special displays.
The next edition of New York Home Textiles Market Week will take place January 31 – February 7, 2008. Additional information and registration is available online at nyhometextilesmarketweek.com.
