Bigger and different

Over 2 800 exhibitors and nearly 30 000 industry professionals from 32 countries converged on the Las Vegas Convention Center for the National Hardware Show, held May 4 to 6.
This year, the show, in its 71st edition was bigger, better and quite different, judging by the many visitors. Working once again with the North American Retail Hardware Association, its educational segment offered a variety of speakers and symposiums that provided visitors with information on how to compete with giant competitors and how to use social media and mobiles to connect with millennials and other younger consumers.
While it is called the National Hardware Show, the show actually is an international sourcing event with exhibiting manufacturers from many countries, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, India, Indonesia, Israel, Italy, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Pakistan, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, the United Kingdom and Vietnam.
To make it easy for visitors to identify new opportunities, the show highlighted new products in two areas - New Product World and another area called New Product Launch for products not yet on the market. Another source of new items was the fact that more than 600 exhibitors were new to the show.
This year's management organised the exhibitors into 15 categories: building products (291 exhibitors), electrical (264), e-commerce (16), farm & ranch (403), hardware/tools (1 104), housewares (758), lawn and garden (1 104), paint and accessories (288), BBQ (372), pet products (100), plumbing (309) and storage (92).

The visitors also noticed that the product categories were better identified by signing than in previous years, making it easier for buyers to find what they were looking for.
Both farm and ranch and emergency/disaster categories are two fast-growing segments for many hardlines retailers, with major U. S. wholesalers adding merchandise in the farm and ranch category to help their customers better compete with big retail chains.
When disasters strike or are about to strike, people flock to their local hardware store or home center for needed items such as generators, plywood to board windows, etc., but retailers generally have not concentrated their marketing efforts on identifying themselves as headquarters for those needs. That is…