What's So Big About The BIG Show?

January 2012 Integrated Solutions For Retailers

By Matt Pillar, Editor In Chief

There is a reality that has nagged me for years about the attention we give the NRF BIG Show.

The NRF reports that 22,000 “industry professionals” from 82 countries attend the event. Even if you naively assume that 22,000 c-level executives from retail enterprises (and not the vendor community) are descending on New York City in a couple of weeks, we’re still only talking about a very small fraction of the more than 28 million people directly employed by the retail industry in the United States alone. Of course, only a small number of those millions are retail technology purchasing decision makers. But the rub lies in the numbers. Sure, 22,000 is a lot of people, even minus the estimated 2,000 or so solutions provider professionals in attendance (assuming a conservative estimate of five representatives per each of the 400 vendors in attendance). That said, our reach via Integrated Solutions For Retailers magazine and retailsolutionsonline.com is so much broader (albeit not as global), reaching far more retail executives, far more consistently than a few days at the Javits Center in New York.