Blog Posts
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2011 RECon Asia Not Worth the Trip
ICSC SmartBrief recently reported that “Retail, developer executives flock to RECon Asia” (http://bit.ly/t24Jy3), which was anything but the case, from my perspective.
This year’s ICSC Event, “RECon Asia”, in Shanghai on November 3rd and 4th, offered limited booths, primarily comprised of China-based developers, property managers and vendors like architects. More importantly, I didn’t find a single American or European retail brand in attendance, although I’m sure a few attended. Most importantly, “flock” is definitely not an adjective that I would have used when describing this event.
This conference was considerably more expensive than ICSC’s Annual Conference in Las Vegas, with maybe one twentieth the typical number of deal making booths as ICSC’s mid-winter conference in Chicago. I attended this conference in support of marketing a couple of new outlet mall developments that we’re currently working on in China, in which I was mainly interested in connecting with a few American and/or European retailers interested in expanding in China. Other than the panel discussions, the deal making hall was literally worthless and took all of 20 minutes to tour.
ICSC needs to do a much better job of preparing its members for what to expect at their overseas conferences, at least until they gain more credibility overseas, so that others don’t make the same mistake that I did by attending future non-events like this one.
On a more positive note, China’s growing at an unbelievable rate currently and the population is clearly spending their new-found wealth. American retailers need to seriously wake-up and pay attention to what’s going on in Asia and jump onto the bandwagon! More to follow…
