LA Men's Market October 2019 at the California Market Center in downtown Los Angeles Photo: LAMM
DIGITAL TRADE EVENTS
LA Men’s Market to Produce Digital Trade Show With Liberty Fairs
After more than a year of not producing in-person events, the LA Men’s Market, the 9-year-old independent, biannual trade show based in downtown Los Angeles, announced that it will be running a digital trade show with Liberty Fairs, a prominent biannual trade event, and its technology partner, Joor.
The show will be produced on the Joor platform starting Feb. 9, said Edwina Kulego, vice president of Liberty Lifestyle & Fashion Fairs, the parent company of the Liberty Fairs show. The digital show will run for four weeks and provide a virtual substitute for Liberty’s February 2021 show in Las Vegas. Attendees can gain entry to the digital show through the respective trade shows’ websites and at joor.com.
Liberty and LAMM’s digital efforts will complement each other because the shows are focused on men’s styles, Kulego said.
“We have always admired the curation and brand relationships that the LA Men’s Market has fostered,” Kulego said. “And, with Liberty typically geared toward Fall and Spring markets and LAMM typically focused on the Summer and Holiday markets, this makes for the perfect collaboration for our collective base of buyers.”
Sannia Shahid, LAMM’s sales director, said that the new arrangement will make digital buying trips easier. “We want to bring the industry together and make it easier to get business done in one place,” Shahid said.
Liberty produced its first digital trade show in August and ran it for a month. Kulego said that the first day of the show enjoyed 1,800 unique visits. Exhibitors displaying goods at the show included Karl Lagerfeld Paris, the Billionaire Boys Club, PRPS, The Kooples and Naked & Famous. The show also featured digital trade-show booths where the brands posted photos and videos.
A new feature, named “favorite,” will be unveiled at the February show. With this feature, if a retailer gives a brand a “favorite” status, the vendor will be granted access to a buyer’s contact information. “Brands will leave the platform with more information to conduct business,” Kulego said.
The digital show also will offer an early-bird deal to vendors, enabling them to start exhibiting on the show site two weeks before the show officially starts, Kulego said. LAMM and Liberty will also produce a special Dec. 17 webinar covering how to participate in the upcoming show.
In January, Liberty is scheduled to announce dates for an in-person Liberty Fairs trade show in Las Vegas in summer 2021, Kulego said.
