Vladislav Shulgin: Imperia Company Develops New Communication Formats with Industry Professionals
Traditionally, at the CJF – Child and Junior Fashion 2020. Spring Exhibition a large block of events was organized by the Imperia Congress and Exhibition Company. A special program for retail chains' purchasing managers, distributors, and manufacturers of children's goods, consisting of visits to the Exhibition and training seminars, always brings together industry professionals. Vladislav Shulgin, Conference Producer, shared his impressions of the spring events.
– At CJF we tend to focus on the speakers and topics reflecting the problems in the categories of children's clothing and footwear, as well as licensing. The speakers spoke about fashion trends and the competent use of licensed characters.
Our main target audience is represented by manufacturers and wholesalers of children's goods. Last year our event was attended by 70 people, and this year – about 90. We are seeing a growing interest towards our program, and that proves that we understand the current trends and problems concerning the industry.
As always, the the Purchasing Centre for Retail Chains was a success. In 2020, this format of events was held for the 20th time. We are expanding our audience on the children’s goods market by attracting online players; we are now focusing on this sales channel. We are visited by representatives of the Ozone, AliExpress companies, these are large volumes, large buyers. Every year we change the focus a bit in order to reflect current topics.
To our analytical sessions we invite speakers who can most fully and specifically answer the questions of the audience. The development department of our company during the month before the Exhibition conducts market research — desk research. Then we hold a direct dialogue with company executives: there are 40-45 profound interviews during which the main problems that they see in business are discussed. The result is a document that presents the attractiveness gradation, which contains all the topics and problems with the assessment of their relevance to the market. In accordance with this, we determine the topics for the sessions and invite reputable speakers. The CJF Exhibition has shown that an interactive model of communication with the audience is becoming extremely popular. And in the near future we are going to develop this format.