Retail Observer

RETAILOBSERVER.COM OCTOBER 2016 10 "Summer Las Vegas Market was epic," said Bob Maricich, CEO of International Market Centers, "Punctuated by un- precedented attendance, order-writing and new resources, we are continuing to deliver on our promise to create the leading furniture, home décor and gift destination in the western United States." While there were year-over-year gains in the market's three product categories (furniture, home décor and gift), attendance growth was particularly robust in the rapidly- escalating gift segment, with increas- es of 28% over last year's Summer Market bringing parity for the first time to the total number of gift buy- ers attending both Summer and Winter Markets. The increasing home décor category also regis- tered strong attendance gains of 4% and the mature furniture segment drew 3% more buyers than last year's event. Buyers from all 50 states attended Summer Market, with the largest numbers of attendees coming from California, Nevada, Arizona, Texas and Utah. International participation continued to be strong, with 73 countries represented; the largest number of attendees from outside of the U.S. came from Canada, Mexico, China, Japan and Panama. Strong attendance increases can be attributed to the swift and sizeable expansion of both permanent and temporary exhibitors, as Las Vegas Market continues to build resource density across its campus. Among the Summer market's more than 5 million square feet of product displays was 118,500-square-feet of new and expanded showroom space representing 66 new and expanding resources. These gains represented all of the Market's core categories—with new and expanding showrooms adding 70,000-square-feet of furniture resources, 21,500-square-feet of home décor resources and 27,000-square-feet of gift resources—as well as record-breaking numbers of casual and outdoor resources and the largest-ever number of temporary exhibitors in the Market's history. Las Vegas Market newcomer, Drew Sweeney, vice president, sales and marketing of La-z-Boy Casegoods, said, "This is our first Las Vegas Market and it's been very good. Our traffic has been better than I expected, our order writing has been better than I expected, and we picked-up eight or nine new west coast accounts that we would not have opened had we not been showing here in Las Vegas. Las Vegas is definitely a west coast market and I am very, very pleased." Vendors and exhibitors at Summer Market said they were pleased with both the quantity and quality of buyer traffic, as well as strong order-writing throughout the week and increasing exposure to new customers. Returning from a seven-year hiatus from Las Vegas, Bob Ulrich, senior vice president of sales and EXPONENTIAL ATTENDANCE GAINS

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