Day 3
I woke to an unusual sound outside the hotel window. It was raining. No, not raining, pouring. It was the first time I had been
in Las Vegas when it had been raining anywhere near this hard. It
didn’t take long to realize that Vegas is not built for the wet.The concrete walkways around and between the hotels are not level. Water was pooling everywhere and making things dangerously slippery. A forest of yellow caution signs had sprouted with the rain. The entire city leaks. There were buckets in some of the casinos collecting water dripping from the ceiling, all the escalators had been shut down (and that meant using slick stairs), and even the monorail cars leaked; as I found out when I looked up to see water escaping from a light fixture above my head.
To give you an idea of how much is was raining, here is a clip I took from the Harrah’s Casino monorail station – Harrah’s Casino Carpark River. People were hanging over the railings amazed as this torrent rushed out of the carpark. It would washed away anyone in it’s path. No cars were hurt in the making of this video.
With umbrellas in the car, Tracy and I ended up soaked as we ran to the car to head off to the Women’s Wear in Nevada (WWIN) show at the Rio.
I didn’t even think that the rain would keep the buyers away from the trade shows. Not unless they were looking for an excuse.
WWIN
WWIN caters to womenswear buyers looking for traditional, missy, petite, plus size and tall options for the 35+ demographic.
There are hundreds of accessory lines covering shoes to hats, purses,
jewelry, belts and scarves. I sourced an excellent accessories supplier
for Z Fabrique that was doing the same contemporary woven bracelets
that I saw at Project for a 10th of the price.WWIN is huge and takes up most of the convention room space at the Rio. I’m not sure how long it has been around but the last time I was there was 10+ years ago, and it had been going for a long time before that. In fact, it hadn’t changed a bit.
Some familiar names like Mod-O-Doc and Fresh Produce were there. Our main interest in going was to meet a highly regarded sales agent with a potential client in mind, and for future trade show referral purposes.
There was an incredible amount of product on show, and a steady flow of buyers. If you have a collection to sell or you are a buyer in this segment of the market, I’d highly recommend you check out the show.
Tracy’s time was up. She had to head back to LA to finalize the end of month shipment for Boxie. Tracy dropped me off at the Venetian so I could dive into the shows at the Sands Convention Center.
The Sands houses MRket, Moda, AccessoriesTheShow, CurveNV, Capsule (which I forgot only ran Monday and Tuesday), and OffPrice (which I wasn’t interested in). MRket, Moda and Accessories share a massive convention floor. The rest have there own rooms.
After a delicious free lunch, I started in on Moda.
Moda
Moda is a contemporary and better women’s ready-to-wear show. There was nothing here that stood out. The showrooms that I spoke to were happy with the buyer traffic, and were writing orders. Why do Moda instead of WWDMAGIC? I don’t know. The collections here are nowhere near as edgy as as Project or as hip as ENK.
AccessoriesTheShow
Some of the jewelry at Accessories was interesting but a lot was cheap looking bling.
There was a good selection of scarves available at affordable price points.
I didn’t think much of the hats on offer. As with other accessories, right now you can pretty much go for it with whatever hat you want. But nothing here caught my eye.
Before I could get to MRket, I got called over to Project then MAGIC to meet people and take care of clients which took care of the rest of the day.
It was the last day of Project. I was keen to hear how the day had gone given the rain. Apparently, it had kept some buyers away. But most collections were happy with the activity. Buyers had left paper, and a couple of showrooms reported solid international business.
Foot traffic at WWDMAGIC had also been affected by the rain.
Day 4, MRket and CurveNV.
Paul Brindley
paul brindley consults
No comments:
Post a Comment