Liberty Fashion & Lifestyle Fairs and Offprice (pictured) recently made major announcements that will impact the trade-show calendar for early 2022. | Photo courtesy of Offprice
TRADE SHOWS
Liberty on Hiatus, Offprice to Co-locate With New Closeout Show
As trade-show organizers make preparations for the 2022 calendar, major announcements were made recently regarding two major apparel-event players. With the first shows of the new year only weeks away, both Liberty Fashion & Lifestyle Fairs and Offprice have revealed major changes to their programming.
On Dec. 7, Sharifa Murdock, founding partner of Liberty, released a statement noting that the contemporary men’s show would not return for the winter months. The show saw a successful run Aug. 4–5 with a new format called Liberty West, an event that was hosted as a product of Liberty partnering with the LA Men’s Market.
“While it has always been our mission to showcase the rising talent and innovations within the men’s and women’s fashion industry through highly impactful trade shows and events, we feel there is no better time than now to hit the pause button and restructure our business model to better suit the forward-thinking and heritage brands we serve,” Murdock said in a statement. “With that, we’ve made the collective decision to put a pause on hosting shows at least through the winter season. Although we’re deeply saddened to pause our shows that so many look forward to attending each year, at the end of the day our goal is to protect the best interest of our incredible brands and designers—which is why we’ll be taking this time to re-evaluate how we operate and implement new initiatives that allow them to scale and add value to their offerings in an even greater way.”
On Dec. 9, Offprice released news regarding its next show, which will take place Feb. 13–16 at the Venetian Expo during the February 2022 Las Vegas apparel trade events. Event organizers announced that Offprice would be co-located with The Closeout Show, which specializes in offering a hard-goods liquidation marketplace.
“We expect to see a wide variety of general merchandise at The Closeout Show,” said Tricia Barglof, executive director of Offprice. “Our attendees know they will find high-margin product at the Offprice show, and we anticipate they will be able to find something unexpected at The Closeout Show that can fill the shelves while waiting for traditionally sourced inventory to arrive.”
As a source for discounted apparel, Offprice is well suited as a co-location neighbor to The Closeout Show, which serves as a resource for manufacturer liquidations and closeouts, a valuable Immediates option during a time when the supply chain continues to see challenges.
“Everyone in the retail space knows that the time to buy deeply discounted inventory is now,” said Gregg Modesti, organizer of The Closeout Show. “Inventory is hard to come by, and our vendors have immediate availability.”
