California Apparel News

The California Mart recently announced the dates for 2002 market weeks, with one noteworthy change from previous years’ market calendars: The Fall I market will be held April 12–16. The market is being moved to avoid having it fall during the Easter and Passover holidays or conflict with Dallas market dates.

“Some people will be happy with [the new week] and some will feel like it’s really late,” said Trish Moreno, Cal Mart’s executive director of marketing, who said that the preferred time for market is the last week of March. Moreno said the second choice was the first week of April. The remaining market dates for 2002 are: Summer, January 11–15; Fall II/Holiday, June 7–11; Holiday, August 9–13; and Spring ’03, November 1–5.

“We have enough tenants who have a single line and a single rep for Los Angeles and Dallas that [an overlap in dates] would represent hundreds of thousands of dollars in loss,” Moreno said, adding that building executives did everything they could to resolve the date conflict, including asking Dallas representatives to move their dates.

“We asked Dallas to move and they tried,” said Moreno. “But because their convention calendar was so booked and they have several different shows that operate out of their building, they couldn’t find a place in the calendar to move [to].”

The Cal Mart Board of Governors met and voted for the new Fall I market week dates. Moreno said that in subsequent years, the goal was to keep the dates as close to the end of March or beginning of April as possible. She also said that the other 2002 market dates are roughly the same as previous years’ dates.

“I don’t have a problem with the rest of the dates, and I don’t think anyone will,” said Moreno, adding, “It’s just one of those years when the holidays overload everything and kind of put everyone into a topspin.”

Moreno said other trade shows that schedule their events based on the Cal Mart market dates have been calling to see what the building plans to do. She has spoken to the organizers of Designers & Agents in the New Mart and communicated with the New Mart’s Ethan Eller.

“I’ve spoken with Barbara Kramer and Ed Mandelbaum because they’re the most vocal about wanting to get their Designers & Agents show fixed,” she said.The New Mart has elected to follow the Cal Mart’s schedule, even though some of its tenants continue to urge them to take a different direction, according to Eller.

“We’ve had 10 years of tenant meetings where the tenants beg us to get involved in the selection of the dates and we keep running into a brick wall,” said Eller. “We don’t get [to get] any input into it.”

Eller said that the New Mart representatives have tried to attend the meetings held by the New York Fashion Council, which includes representatives from the Cal Mart, the Americas Mart in Atlanta, the Chicago Apparel Center in Chicago, the Concourse Exhibition Center in San Francisco and the Dallas Market Center in Dallas, but has not been welcome to the meetings, leaving them to work closely with the Cal Mart.

Eller said the New Mart has been working with the Cal Mart and discussing possible cooperative efforts.

“I’m real excited about their new management team and new ownership,” he said. “I think they’re heading in a good direction.But by the same token, my tenants are hitting me with a ton of new ideas.”

Eller said those ideas are probably the same ideas that the tenants of the Cal Mart come up with and present the same level of difficulty when a resolution is being sought.

“We have a hundred tenants; they probably have a thousand or more,” said Eller. “How do you get a consensus among that many business owners? If I show in Dallas, I’m going to be sensitive to those Dallas dates. If I don’t show in Dallas, then who cares? How do we change what we’re doing and satisfy everybody? We can’t.”

Weekday Market Discussed Eller said that the discussion of moving market week dates has been raging for eight years with no resolution. The final outcome of every debate has been to follow the Cal Mart and continue those discussions, which may eventually provoke change.

“After all of this fuss for the eighth year in a row, nobody’s going to make a move to do anything different,” said Eller. “In our talks with the Cal Mart, we may make some moves, but I don’t think anybody’s going to make a move all on their own.”

Eller said one of the things that may eventually happen for both marts is the movement of market from Friday through Tuesday to Monday through Friday.

“Change is going to happen, but it’s going to take some outside stimulus. [But it will have] to make sense,” he said.The tenants in the New Mart discussed moving market to the weekdays, but according to Eller, it didn’t make sense for everybody.

“As of now, all of our plans regarding dates are to follow the lead of the California Mart, to continue to lobby the California Mart to come around to our point of view when our point of view makes sense,” said Eller. “I’m here to tell you that the latest offering from my tenants made no sense for half the people.”

Moreno said that the tenants in Cal Mart had the same discussion but didn’t even want to test the idea.

“[Moving the market to Monday through Friday] was not well-received at all by our tenant base,” said Moreno.“I proposed that we test it in the June and August markets to see how it works, but our tenant base wasn’t interested,” she said, noting logistical problems with opening market on a Monday, namely the fact that the building would be closed over the weekend and there would be no building services or air conditioning for tenants and temporary exhibitors who would need access to the Cal Mart prior to market. Also, some tenants said that much of their temporary sales help work over the weekends and might be unavailable during the week.

“Based on those issues, they didn’t even want to test it, so we’ve put that issue aside for now,” Moreno said.