Dorothy Belshaw is CEO and co-founder of Rockview Management Group, which in April acquired NY NOW from Emerald Holding. He has 33 years behind in the gift industry, eight of which as a show director of NY NOW before moving to IMC. We met at the Javits Center at the fair.
This is the first Summer Show under the new property of RMG. What will find different visitors who have already participated in NY NOW?
Affluence is strong. It is slightly growing compared to a year ago, although we will have to wait for the closing of the fair to make a budget. So far everyone seems satisfied with the participation and, above all, of the business they are ending.
Visitors will also notice that branding has changed. It is a little more daring and, we believe, more representative of New York and the region. We also reviewed the exhibition layout to make it more compact and easier for buyers, with combinations between the categories that make more sense.
Several exhibitors returned after a few years of absence and we have more than 70 new exhibitors, so there is much to discover for buyers. We want people to come here and do business with the suppliers they already know and count on, but also walk the corridors and find something they didn’t expect. This balance for us is really important.
Your site speaks of “intentional curation”, a balance between dimension and intimacy. How do you maintain this balance in the selection of exhibitors?
We arrived only three months ago, so we are really at the beginning, but our strategy towards 2027 is to report reference companies in each of the main categories of the gift.
In the United States there are about ten great categories of gift and we want to make sure we have the best brands in each of them, while still introducing new ones. The buyers must be able to do business with the suppliers they already know and at the same time discover new products and new companies.
Much of this depends on listening. We talk continuously with buyers and suppliers of what they think is missing and who would like to see at the fair, and we have a team with a huge experience in the industry that helps us to follow those suggestions. Every member of our sales team has at least ten years of experience in the gift and home industry: he knows buyers and understands the market. This knowledge, combined with long-standing relationships, is of incalculable value while we rebuild the fair.
The fair covers gift & lifestyle, jewelry and accessories, and home. Which of these categories is recording the most interesting growth right now, and why?
Gift and lifestyle is still our broadest category, but based on the demand and contacts we have already received, we expect a significant growth of the Home in 2027.
We also expect hand-crafted products to grow considerably this winter, both from the United States and abroad. New York has always been a very strong market for the handicapped, which has historically been a very important part of NY NOW. Buyers and suppliers told us they want it back, so it’s an aspect we’re very focused on.
The third area is the paperwork. At the Winter Show we will collaborate with the Greeting Card Association, and we expect this to bring significant growth in tickets, paper and everything that is connected to that sector.
What kind of buyers do you expect this year: big retail chains, independent boutiques or a mix? And how do you help them navigate through hundreds of brands?
It’s a mix. On the basis of pre-registrations we know that we will see large buyers such as TJX and some of the major specialized chains such as Anthropologie, but most of our buyer base is made up of independent specialized shops, especially gift shops.
We also have a very strong community of museum stores, with the presence of most major museum shops in the region, as well as several interior designers looking for decorative objects for their projects.
This mix has always been part of what makes NY NOW interesting. The buyers can arrive knowing exactly who they must meet, but there is also the opportunity to travel the corridors, see a live product, talk to the person behind it and find something they did not know to look for. Not always online you can replicate this kind of discovery.
Looking at the next Winter and Summer Market, what are your short-term expansion plans and what can we expect from the next winter edition?
Our goal for the Winter Show is to grow at least 50 percent compared to today, perhaps more, which would probably mean adding another 200 exhibitors.
We will be co-located with the Greeting Card Association, which we will announce tomorrow, and launch a Handmade Division. We are also very focused on the reconstruction of the house category in 2027, from decorative accessories to table and housewives. This includes everything, from fine porcelain to kitchen utensils, to table linen and other kitchen textiles: all historically strong categories for the New York market.
As we bring in these exhibitors, we will work with them to understand what their reference buyers are and to ensure that we reach those too. For us it is not about growing only for the taste of growing. We want to reconstruct the categories that buyers ask us and make NY NOW a place where they can conclude a significant part of their purchases on one trip. If we can give them the brands they already count on, make new resources discover and make the whole experience easier, then we are doing our job.
What makes Rockview Management Group different from other trade fair organizers?
I think the unusual thing for us is to be an organizer of small, independent and privately owned fairs. Today it is quite rare, because most other organizers of this sector are large corporations or are owned by private equity funds.
This independence gives us a lot of flexibility. We are agile, we can make decisions quickly and we can stay very close to our customers. When buyers and exhibitors tell us what they need, we can listen to them and respond without having to decide according to what happens to the next quarterly. On the other hand, we can focus on what we think is best for the fair and the sector we need.
The other aspect is the community, because this is a very sector based on relationships. Many of the exhibitors and buyers present today have already told us that the fair is perceived different. There is heat. Looks more friendly, more partnership.
It’s a great pleasure for us, because that’s exactly what we want. NY NOW must obviously be a place where people come to do business, but we also want it to be a place where people really want to be: where they meet people who know, know about new ones and build relationships that continue long after the end of the fair.
Article Dorothy Belshaw: NY NOW returns to grow, one step at a time comes from IlNewyorkese.
