TRADE SHOWS
Womenswear In Nevada Filled With Buyers Who Gathered for A Surprise Announcement
Inside the Rio All-Suite Hotel & Casino, the various ballrooms with exotic names such as Amazon, Brasilia and Tropical were packed with clothing and accessories that painted a vivid portrait of the vast apparel offerings sold in the United States.
For the past 19 years, the twice-a-year Womenswear In Nevada show has been jammed with hundreds of exhibitors who cater to a specialty-store crowd from across the country. This year, some 400 exhibitors were at the Feb. 4–7 show, which was filled with buyers on the first day, one day before the start of MAGIC.
This was the third year in a row that Sandy Martin and her husband, Jim Martin, have been showing Green 3, an apparel manufacturing company they started in Oshkosh, Wis., in 2006. The manufacturer concentrates on making its entire collection of sweaters, ponchos, skirts, shirts, T-shirts, tunics and accessories out of organic cotton or reclaimed materials. Everything is made in the United States.
“The show is actually a good show for us,” said Sandy Martin, who for years worked for Kohl’s and was in charge of the department store’s Sonoma brand. “It is the one location we know we are going to see specialty-store and catalog buyers,” she said, which is the kind of retailer Green 3 appeals to because it offers a different selection of merchandise. “There is a range of people here who are from coast to coast.”
Jim Martin said the company gets a lot of customers because its sustainable goods are out of the ordinary and appeal to the buyer looking for something different. “Because of that, we get a lot of new customers here.” As he was talking, a retailer from Ottawa, Canada, stepped up to the booth to take a closer look at the cropped cardigans and organic-cotton ponchos that had clever animal-oriented designs on them.
Nancy Provda, who every season brings her Signature by Fridaze line to the show from her Northern California office, was seeing appointments and some walk-by traffic for the line, which is known for its wrinkle-free linen tops wholesaling for $59.
“This is a good market for us because we open new accounts,” she said, noting she had already opened a new account from Oregon and one from Virginia. “There are a lot of people who come from all over the country here.”
On the first night of the show, the usual wine-and-cheese networking party was set up on the show floor. On Tuesday evening, the show organizers had a cocktail reception where they announced that the womenswear show would be moving to the Caesars Forum for the Aug. 17–20, 2020, edition of the event.
