MAGIC’S LOGGIA: THE NEXT STEP
FLOOR-PLAN CHANGES AND OTHER AMENITIES SHOULD IMPROVE THE SHOW’S FLOW.
Byline: Bob Makela
LOS ANGELES — With attendance up 34 percent at the last edition of WWD/MAGIC International in Las Vegas last August, Joe Loggia might take the attitude: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”
Instead, MAGIC’s chief operating officer and his staff have made a few adjustments to the upcoming women’s apparel and accessories expo at the Las Vegas Hilton, to be held Jan. 30-Feb. 2 in conjunction with the men’s wear edition of MAGIC next door at the Las Vegas Convention Center.
“We got excellent feedback after the last show,” said Loggia. “But the one area our customers wanted to see improvement in was merchandising. They wanted us to merchandise the show better, group people where they belong.”
To meet the needs of a growing constituency — the show in August attracted 70,000 attendees from 94 countries — Loggia hired fashion and merchandising consultant Denise Scher to help make the show space more efficient. Gone is the “Who’s New” section, although there are nearly 200 companies exhibiting for the first time. They will be merchandised with other manufacturers by category. Several manufacturers weren’t invited back, to make room for the new crowd. Makela declined to elaborate on some of the resources.
“It’s always hard to make everybody happy,” said Loggia, who is a former police officer. “What we’re doing is developing objective criteria to decide who gets in the show and where they are merchandised.”
The criteria entail price points, type of stores a manufacturer sells to, quality of merchandise, quality of the display, how long the manufacturer has been in business and its reputation in the industry.
“All of it is subjective,” Loggia added. “But you still need to have guidelines. Especially when you’re in the position of turning people away.”
One area that’s grown significantly is women’s contemporary. Last August’s show featured 119 contemporary booths. In January there will be 243.
“Our merchandiser has gone through the show and categorized the companies differently,” said Loggia. “We’ve now got manufacturers in areas that make sense.”
He explained that the show is not looking for additional manufacturers to exhibit, although the company gets a lot of requests from people who’d like to be a part of the show.
“A buyer can see about 1,000 lines at the women’s show and another 350 to 400 women’s collections at the men’s show next door very efficiently,” said Loggia. “But our current focus is on quality, not growth.”
While the demand for booth space increases, Loggia has decided to expand the show internally, which means the 1.7 million square feet of exhibitor space for the men’s and women’s expositions will not be expanded. Instead, MAGIC management has opted to focus on servicing existing customers.
At the last edition, Loggia said, there was a significant improvement in the services available: food, phone, ease of movement, ease of shopping.
“The exhibitors had a much easier time of it,” he said. Customer satisfaction is again being addressed for the next show by adding more buses to cut down on waiting time, and the pocket-sized show handbook has been redesigned with an easier-to-use directory.
“At the last show, we had additional food stations and additional labor on hand for people who needed help,” says Loggia. “Our staff was beefed up. There was just more manpower. Now we’re concentrating more on exhibitor quality and merchandising quality.”
And with about a total of 3,000 exhibitors showing 5,000 lines at the men’s and women’s editions, does Loggia worry about the event becoming too big?
“What we continually strive for,” he said, “is for the show to be as efficient and valuable to both the retailers and the exhibitors as possible. Case in point: the designer pavilion. We’d had a lot of requests from the retailers to open a new end of the market. We had some retailers who we weren’t currently servicing. We weren’t servicing those exhibitors and we weren’t servicing higher-end retailers who wanted to see the Calvin Kleins and the Joseph Abbouds.
“By adding that pavilion, yes, the show grew. But most of the exhibitors were new. And it also attracted new retailers, who at the same time they’re shopping the designer pavilion will shop in the men’s areas in traditional and contemporary, and the rest of the show, because it makes sense. For us to make a decision to grow the show physically, it really has to be a win/win for both sides.”
With two busy women’s shows under his belt, Loggia is eager to make the WWD/MAGIC show a necessity for doing business in the women’s apparel industry. “I think people are starting to realize, especially the women’s retailers, that it’s one place where you can see a lot of people very efficiently,” he said.
“We are providing a service. We’re providing a communication link to the retail community who are coming to MAGIC anyway,” he added. “There’s a huge percentage of retailers who come to MAGIC that are specialty stores that carry both men’s and women’s. And quite a few of our buyers have always registered that they buy men’s and women’s. There’s a tremendous advantage for them to be able to do one-stop shopping. Other shows have used the marketing line, ‘One place, one time, one market,’ but it truly is what you get at MAGIC and WWD/MAGIC. Between the two, you can see men’s and women’s merchandise, from [discount to high-end]. In today’s market, it’s important to be able to see everything together. It’s a snapshot of the industry.