by Lisa Evans
Come January 12, 2016, the staff at AmericasMart® Atlanta will celebrate the new year – in style. Not only will the show be opening for their 1,400+ permanent exhibitors, they will also kick off the start of the year by debuting hundreds of fabulous new products ranging all across the multi-building campus. On January 14, the temporary exhibitors open their showrooms, adding an additional 2,000 collections to the fun as the International Gift and Home Furnishing Market show runs its course in Atlanta through January 19, 2016
Celebration is definitely the name of the game for the January market, as Chelsea Peabody, Strategic Relations and Media Relations manager for AmericasMart® explains. “The company has recently announced the amazing 100% growth in our international exhibiting companies for the January show,” she states, “We’re very proud to have nearly 90 countries represented and over 10,000 different lines, all in this one show.” Strategically held in January each year, the International Gift and Home Furnishings Show is the first opportunity of the year for buyers to review thousands of quality wholesale products in the Gift, and Home Décor categories.
In 2016, AmericasMart® will also be host to the global premiere of the Pantone® Color of The Year – the Atlanta showrooms will be the first in the world to unveil the color in designer curated vignettes located throughout the campus. World renowned designers Michel Boyd and Kristin Alber of REstyleSOURCE will showcase the new Pantone® color using a vast range of home décor and gift products, all sourced from the showrooms of AmericasMart®.
The Gift Collection showrooms, housed in Building 2 of the downtown campus, are sure to be a huge draw to buyers. “Our teams are experts at developing amazing floor experiences,” Peabody offers. “For example on the 14th floor of Building 2 there are a lot of new specialty toys coming in, and so they’ve created this great resource for buyers to see everything. The team has paired the new toys with specialty gifts items, so it’s a really great experience where you can see how the toys and the other gifts go together. It gives retailers great ideas about what they can do in their own stores.”
The January Market offers retailers a unique chance to meet with their favorite suppliers, and also browse hundreds of new items, all at their leisure. “Our founder, John Portman, called it ‘a department store for retailers.'” Peabody explains. “Mr. Portman’s vision was to have all the products together so that retailers could come in and shop for everything they needed, all in one place.” As an additional tribute to Mr. Portman, a world famous architect as well as a wholesale industry luminary, the January show will also support the launch of 230 Peachtree, the newly renovated downtown building that had been originally designed by Mr. Portman in 1965. Reacquired by Portman Holdings, the building was updated and renovated, and now houses a new boutique hotel, Hotel Indigo, and a restaurant named for Mr. Portman himself, JP Atlanta.
For those buyers visiting the International Gift and Home Furnishings Market for the first time, your best advice is to plan ahead. With 7.2 million square feet of display space, mapping your trip is a must for even experienced show visitors. Peabody suggests making good use of the company’s website, www.americasmart.com, where retailers can find many resources to help plan a successful trip. “We have our AmericasMart® app, which you can use to make a market plan.” Peabody adds, “Once you arrive, we have new buyer breakfasts where our Retail Services team will meet with new buyers, have a complimentary breakfast and help put together a plan for how to shop the market.”
AmericasMart® buyers may register online in advance, and Peabody also notes that the Hotel Indigo and JP Atlanta restaurant are currently taking reservations. Visit www.americasmart.com for discount details and more information on the 2016 show.