New Look Planned for Sourcing at MAGIC
Woodland Hills, Calif.–based trade show producer MAGIC International is revamping the Sourcing at MAGIC section in time for the Feb. 21–24 run of the MAGIC Marketplace in Las Vegas.
Show organizers will be merchandising the Sourcing show in the South Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center into separate sections for contractor-manufacturer; original-design manufacturer; fabric; trim; and service providers, which includes technology companies, logistics solutions companies, color and trend service providers, packaging, and companies that sell display materials and fixtures.
Sourcing at MAGIC and its fabric arm, Fabric at MAGIC, launched in 2003 and have grown from 267 companies occupying 29,400 square feet of space in August 2003 to 729 companies occupying 84,530 square feet in August 2005.
“Over time, we have seen a 173 percent increase in companies [exhibiting],” said Camille Candella, director of marketing for MAGIC. “What that has done is created a need for us to better categorize the show floor to make it easier for the product-development person to shop.”
Among the expected companies showing at MAGIC are returning exhibitors Irfan Textiles, from Pakistan; India Fashions, from India; Everest Textiles, from Taiwan; and Mountainbell Co. Ltd., based in China and Cambodia. New exhibitors include Italian trim supplier Bottonificio BAP S.P.A., Eclat Textile Co. LTD., based in City of Industry, Calif., and Taipei, Taiwan; and New Tech Display, a Los Angeles–based visual-display and fixture company.
“Now there is a place where the product-development community can come and preview over 700 resources as opposed to chasing around the world,” Candella said. “The end of quota has definitely increased opportunities for these companies to come into the market.”
Sourcing at MAGIC and Fabric at MAGIC are focused on the production side of the business, rather than the retail/wholesale side of the business, which is the focus of the rest of the massive trade show.
“The target [attendees] are anybody in the product-development side of the business,” Candella said. “That would include fabric buyers and designers, product-development and sourcing managers, logistics managers, anybody that does pricing management—anybody that is geared toward the production side of the business, whether that be in branded wholesale or in the retail private-label side of the business.”
The new segmentation of the Sourcing and Fabric section will also help differentiate which resources are best suited to smaller manufacturers, Candella said.
“In the original-design manufacturer [section] of Sourcing, these are manufacturers that have design capabilities—they have pre-designed lines and they sell in quantities that are lower than a contractor-manufacturer,” she explained, adding that companies designated as contractor-manufacturers typically have minimums of 2,400 pieces, while an original-design manufacturer, or ODM, might set its minimums below 400.
“So if you are a branded wholesaler and make jeans, if you want to have some additional offerings to sell to retailers, you might go to pick up a line from an ODM manufacturer to add with your jeans to have more of a collection,” Candella said. —Alison A. Nieder
