April Buying Week is coming up, showcasing next season’s best apparel, formalwear, and accessories in Atlanta. From April 1 to 4, buyers, retailers, and insiders will flock to AtlantasMart for the event’s official debut—including The Link Companies‘ Brad Rosenkampff and Leib Associates, Inc.‘s Randy Leib. Ahead of the event’s public launch, we spoke with Rosenkampff and Lieb on their preparations for Buying Week, top brands they work with, and what the latest updates are within the retail landscape right now.
Brad Rosenkampff, CMO, The Link Companies
Brad Rosenkampff (Courtesy of Brad Rosenkampff)
April Buying Week is the first of its king. In your eyes, what makes this market important to the retail landscape?
Personally, number one, having served on the Apparel Marts’ advisory board a few years ago, we talked about the spring market and possibly a fall market in the future—but specifically, the spring market, combining markets to take advantage of the entire campus. I do have showrooms. Our company has showrooms in building 2, which is the gift mart. We also have showrooms in building 3, the apparel mart. We saw within the last 15 to 20 years in the industry, this meshing of boutique and gift and gift with apparel, especially casual apparel and a lot of gift stores—even hospital gift shops!—carrying a lot more gift-type items, whether it’s personal care products that we were doing on our side of the world for many, many years, or candles or home accents. It was only natural to combine them for various reasons, one of which was, we have too many shows across the list across America. There’s too many shows going on, so a natural combination of the spring home and gift with the apparel, which is a pretty large one in Atlanta. April [Atlanta] Apparel is one of the top three apparel markets in Atlanta. [This] takes advantage of the whole campus with all the doors open and showrooms open, and so forth. I think it’s a good move.
Brad Rosenkampff (Courtesy of Brad Rosenkampff)
What brands is Linked Companies working with for the market that you’re excited to see on-site?
Because it’s an apparel show, we lean in towards that segment of what we do with our sales teams and our retailers. Coco + Carmen, which is a large vendor for us for many, many years, have a presence in building 2 in the gift side, and also with us building 3 on the apparel side. Myra Bag is now going into a bit more apparel. It’s always been a big vendor for us. On the accessories side, with the bags that they offer, we also have Soruka, which is a an accessory bag line. All three of these that I mentioned are showing in building 3 as well—so, they take advantage of both the gift side of things and the apparel side of things. We have Top It Off Accessories, which is in building 3, apparel and casual lifestyle apparel. Katydid is a big vendor for us, in building 2 on the gift side, and also in building 3. There’s seven or eight that we’ll focus on. It’s always nice when we have people that cross over, especially from apparel to gift that normally don’t, because the campus will be open, that may come into the showroom and see some things that they may not have normally looked at because they’re not typically shown at the apparel markets that may be looking for some type of accessory line for their boutiques or stores. We’ll have people there, and our sales teams will be there to take advantage of that and work with those customers looking for something new.
Coco + Carmen (Courtesy)
What are some popular gifting trends, or gift-related trends, that you’ve noticed right now?
There were some categories through COVID-19, and even post-COVID, that took a hit. Jewelry was one of them. It just wasn’t as strong for the gift side, and really the retail side has bounced back nicely in the last couple years. We do quite a bit of Christmas [gifts], [and] the buying season for Christmas is ending. The majority of Christmas is booked for the year in the first quarter, so it’s winding down as we wind down this first quarter. But the Christmas buying category got an uptick coming out of COVID, as did garden accessories and people doing stuff at home, where people are staying at home, and that trend’s stayed strong on the last couple years. Access to home furnishings were not huge; furniture and stuff is still pretty difficult…just as unexpected [is] the consequences of the people who don’t really know how to plan accordingly. Right now, it’s a little up in the air, but the home market is not as strong. Where it got a bit of an uptick last two years has settled back in. There’s a wide variety of personal care products, items that traditionally do well. It was a really good Christmas retail-wise, but still expendable income is tough with inflation and so forth. The majority of the items that are selling really well are under $100, if not under $50 for a lot of stores, especially this time of year. Stores will be looking for general gift items for Mother’s Day, and as we head towards the travel summer season, graduation, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day gifts, wedding season. It’ll probably be a little less pricey than they have been the last two or three years. People are watching budgets a bit. But jewelry has rebounded nicely. People are still buying lifestyle casual apparel that’s affordable, as the majority of people were pretty wearing pretty casual lifestyle outfits when they go out or go to the grocery store or travel. So, that category is still really good.
What’s the response been like from the retailers and brands you work with ahead of April Buying Week? How are they feeling about it?
The response, as far as the combination of the shows at this first ever buying week, has been really good. It remains to be seen. We have the stores that have to come in, and we looked at the pre-registration list. They look pretty good. It just remains to be seen how much of an uptick we get in volume compared to the previous springs of the last 20 years or so. The spring market softened, so we are excited about it. But “cautiously optimistic” would be the best way to describe it.
Where do you see April Buying Week going in the future? Do you think it will become a staple market year-round?
We’ll probably settle into this pattern of buying for the future. That’s a really big thing, but that’s what I think will happen. We might see this also in the fall. We always have a fall September market in Atlanta, but there’s also the August apparel market and the October market, so you’ve got this mini-show, if you will, sandwiched in. I could see that merging, like they did with this Buying Week. I think again, you’ll see a fall buying week probably combined in with August [Atlanta] Apparel. It could be in October. Where they move it, I’m not sure, but one of those will probably engulf the gift show, like they’ve done in the spring.
Randy Leib, vice president, Leib Associates, Inc.
Randy Leib (Courtesy of Randy Leib)
How have brands you’re working with been preparing for Atlanta Buying Week?
We send out a lot of PR, use a lot of our social media, Instagram, and photographs. We also call all of our active accounts, and we text a lot to our accounts. We had four people doing that for the last two and a half weeks. So, we’re ready!
Very exciting! Are there new brands you’re working with in the upcoming season, or new innovations at current brands you work with that your team is excited to share?
We’ve started this year with a company from the west coast, called West Of—meaning “west of New York.” They were designers at Cleobella and J.Brand and a few others; the two designers that teamed up to do this have 20 years of experience. Randy Marder and his group of investors have launched it, and their design studio and offices are out in Long Beach—so it has much more of a West Coast vibe. It’s mainly dresses and blouses, and it has their own twist. We launched with Self Contrast, which is a West Coast brand that is very casual, separates with an overtone to it. We were trying to reach out to a different demographic of price structure, because we’re one of the more expensive showrooms in the in the Mart with our brands such as Amanda Richard, Autumn Cashmere, Sundays, and Karina Grimaldi. This one brought it down about 40%, called Velvet Heart, which is completely total separates. There’s more stores at that price range coming into this building.
You work with so many upscale brands. What are some fall and holiday trends that your team spotted across the brands you represent?
It’s more dressing. Not like the ’80s, but more dressing, getting dressed, versus [being] so casual. New jacket styling, new pant styles, skirts are very important. The color brown is definitely the color. We try to be more curated; we represent seven companies, and there’s five of us hre.
That sounds like a very tailored approach!
We’ve always done it that way. Our philosophy is always, “Do more with less.” Our road people travel with roughly two lines each, sometimes three at the very most. This way, we know our brands backwards and forwards. When you work with us, you get a presentation. We don’t let people just thumb through the brands.
You’ve worked with Autumn Cashmere for many years—and that brand has a huge audience. What do you think keeps people coming back to its versatile products, especially its namesake cashmere?
We do more than just cashmere these days. We started doing cotton, 100% cotton, about 12 years ago, and it’s grown to where it’s probably 30% of the collection, 35%. For the southeast, that’s great. Our designers go to Europe twice a year, and they look for more creative yarns to make us new and innovative.
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