Forward Global Trade Show Aims to Be the First Online
Entrepreneurs have produced online fashion markets and fashion shows. Consumers shop online. So the next reasonable step seems to be online trade shows.
At least that’s what Kele Meenan plans to do. The former sales rep and buyer is planning to produce an online apparel trade show, called the Forward Global Trade Show, that will hold its first event March 2–3, 2010. The idea of an online trade show, believed to be the first of its kind, seems a bit futuristic.
Like any other trade show, exhibitors will show their wares at booths, but they will be virtual booths that buyers can browse.
Vendors will show their fashions with videos and an alphabet soup of online-friendly visual programs such as JPEGs and PDFs.
Buyers and attendees will be able to mix in trade show lounges using avatars, such as pictures and video-game-style characters, that will represent them in an online world. Vendors and buyers will communicate through a variety of functions, such as e-mail, instant messaging and blogging.
And vendors will get a detailed report of all activity that occurred in their virtual booth after the trade show ends.
Exhibitors will pay $3,500 to build a virtual booth. Buyers are admitted for free.
Forward Global Trade Show will be open for a 48-hour period, four times each year.
For the first show, the number of exhibitors will be capped at 300. More than 3,000 buyers are expected, said Meenan, whose background includes working as a sales representative for brands such as Triple 5 Soul and as a store buyer for a retail chain in the United Kingdom.
Fashion entrepreneurs have been building online marketplaces and virtual showrooms with limited success for the last decade. But sometimes, face-to-face networking is irreplaceable. Trade show producer Aaron Levant said that an online trade show will not replicate the personal contacts developed at offline trade shows. It won’t substitute for a show’s parties or traveling to a new place.
But Levant admitted that trade show producers who ignore this new platform do so at their own peril. It might put them on the wrong side of business history.
“With all that said, historically, technology seems to win nine times out of 10,” said Levant who produces Agenda, an apparel trade show scheduled for Jan 8–9 in Huntington Beach, Calif. He currently has no plans to produce an online trade show.
Forward Global Trade Show will launch its Web site, www.forwardshow.com, the second week of October. For more information, Forward can be contacted at info@forwardshow.com or at (562) 213-3140 and (949) 502-1239.—Andrew Asch
