Agenda Ramps Up Tokyo Show
Prominent action-sports and streetwear trade show producer Agenda announced new dates for a Tokyo trade show—and a new Japanese partner.
Los Angeles–based Agenda will produce Agenda Tokyo Aug. 18–19 at the Belle Salle Harajuku events space in Tokyo’s stylish Harajuku district. It will be co-produced with Green Room Inc., a Japanese producer of the surf-themed Green Room Festival in Yokohama, as well as operator of a Hawaiian art gallery and marketer to Japanese youth. The company has not produced a trade show before.
“Agenda is not traditional,” Agenda president and co-founder Aaron Levant said. “I did not want to go with a boring trade show company.I did not have experience doing trade shows when I started. That’s a positive.”
The new show comes after a year-long hiatus for Agenda’s Tokyo productions. The skate, surf and fashion trade show had been produced in Tokyo biannually since 2006. But Levant parted ways with his former co-producers, whom he declined to identify. The Japanese shows remained small, while Agenda’s Southern California shows and New York shows have blossomed into the leading trade events for the surf and skate industry, with more than 300 brands exhibiting, including top brands such as Volcom, Obey, Hurley and The Hundreds.
“We needed to catch up to our own pace,” Levant said of the Japanese shows.
Green Room reportedly made contact with Agenda in November 2010. Contracts were to be signed in March, but the catastrophic earthquake and tsunami hit Japan in March, which temporarily bought the country to a standstill.“I thought that was a wrap. It was going to be pushed back for a year,” Levant said. “A couple of weeks later, they said that they were going to push ahead.”
It’s going to be a busy summer for Agenda. The Agenda NYC show is scheduled to run July 18–19. The Agenda show in Huntington Beach, Calif., is scheduled to run Aug. 3–4.—Andrew Asch
