Reimagined retail

The National Hardware Show took place in the past week in Las Vegas (USA) with more than 2 600 exhibitors. The number of exhibitors was over 2 800 a year ago. The total number of visitors, which also includes exhibitors and the media for example, has remained the same at nearly 30 000, among them - also as in the previous year - around 20 000 buyers.
This year the theme of the three-day trade fair from 9 - 11 May 2017 was "Reimagine Retail" as it recognised the tremendous growth of online retailing in addition to the changes made necessary for conventional brick-and-mortar retailing.
To make it easy for buyers, show management established a Featured Products Gallery in one dedicated room, which included New Product World, Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Recovery, Energy Efficient Products display and two awards displays.
There the show organised products for Emergency Preparation and Disaster Relief, as well as safety-related products. The idea behind this: hardware stores could possibly group some of those products into a new category which would set them apart from mass merchandising competitors and online competition.
As always, the New Products section highlighted products already offered by show exhibitors, but this year another section, New Product Launch, in the Central Lobby, featured products not yet on the market but ready to be launched, so buyers could get an early start in deciding if they had sales potential. The Inventors Spotlight was the third dedicated new product area, showing products seeking a manufacturer to bring them to market.

A dominant theme in the accompanying conference programme was the threat to stationary hardware trade by online trade. Several of the educational sessions were devoted to helping retailers compete. Speakers focused on the critical need for better-trained employees as well as store designs and layouts that make it easy to shop and would excite customers about products available in stores.
Will Aubuchon, CEO of the Aubuchon chain of more than 100 hardware stores in America's northeast, explained how his company has embraced online retailing in order to compete with Amazon and other online sellers. He said it is imperative that consumers be given shopping options - in-store or…