Just as retailers realise they must keep improving to satisfy customer needs, this year's National Hardware Show, held May 7-9, offered buyers a number of major improvements designed to make it easier to shop and easier to find new items or explore other market opportunities.
There was also the added advantage of a series of educational seminars, several of them focusing on the rapidly evolving world of social media and mobile devices and their impact on retailing and marketing.

The National Hardware Show attracts wholesale and retail buyers from around the world - as far away as Australia, Europe, South America and Asia - in addition to full-line and specialty wholesalers and distributors, and individual retailers and chain stores of all kinds from throughout North and Central America.

Because buyers are always looking for "something new", this year the show featured three segments emphasising new items: a New Products section, an Innovation Section and an area dedicated to showcasing new exhibitors, whose products, in most cases, would be new to most attendees.

A Packaging Exposition, rewarding firms with outstanding packaging, also helped buyers focus on sales-making products and effective POS merchandising aids.

But perhaps the most important change in the show this year was the improved organisation of the show by merchandise category, making it much easier for buyers to concentrate their product reviews of the items of most importance to them. And because the show consisted of more than 2,700 exhibitors, such a departmental organisation was most helpful.

Recognising overall merchandising trends, two new categories were offered - building products and farm & ranch.

Next year's show will be held in Las Vegas May 6-8, 2014.