Is Participating on Wholesale Clothing Trade Show Worth It?

Those wholesalers who participate in trade shows travel coast to coast three 3 to four 4 times a year bringing their catalogs, samples of their inventory, and many bring pallets and truck loads for upfront immediate sales.

Years ago, most retailers come to trade shows to buy inventory for their stores or boutiques. This is where they meet as many wholesale clothing suppliers and distributors selling the season's trendiest style in fashion.

Trade show selling still exists but a lot less participants than many years ago. There are plenty of reasons why trade shows are no longer the best channel to get exposure and sales these days:

1) Participating in trade shows are costly. Fees, shipping, catalogs, booths, extra materials, etc is a hefty price to pay for wholesalers these days. In most cases, wholesale distributors participating in a trade show end up spending no less than $10K.

2) Because of the hefty costs of participating in a trade show, trade show becomes no less than a very expensive means of marketing, branding and exposure. More often than not, wholesalers bear massive monetary loss because they did not get enough buyers during the trade show or enough inquiry resulting to future possible sales.

3) With the very slow sales in the retail sector, retail business owners opt to let go of invitations to come to trade shows due to airfare, hotel, meals and other expenses associated with it. The lack of credit to purchase inventory is another factor.

4) In the past two (2) years, the economic downturn hit as many fashion retailers forcing their business to close down.

5) With the rise of internet users - many retailers and wholesale clothing distributors alike are primarily relying on wholesale clothing online stores to engage business versus the traditional costly trade show.

6) With the rising cost of traditional trade show attendance and exposure that gives them limited geographical limitation as far as sales is concerned are now more and more getting into having online presence to bring their inventory to the millions of retailers and would be retailers across the globe.

7) The internet becomes the new haven for wholesale clothing companies to continue their operation with minimal monthly expenses while maintaining customers and gaining new ones from different parts of the country and overseas.

Any business in survival mode will shift to the less costly but effective means rather than sticking to their old guns that produces hardly any. While some may not agree, but the truth of the matter is, there are some traditional business practices that are doomed to go the bare minimum if not totally faced out.