Dorothy Belshaw is CEO and co-founder of Rockview Management Group, which acquired NY NOW from Emerald Holding in April. She has spent 33 years in the gift industry, including eight as show director of NY NOW before moving to IMC. We met with her at the Javits Center during the fair.
This is the first Summer Show under RMG’s new ownership. What will visitors who’ve attended NY NOW before find different this time?
Attendance is strong. It’s up a little from a year ago, although we’ll have to see how the show finishes. So far, everyone seems happy with the turnout and, most importantly, with the business they’re writing.
Visitors will also notice that the branding has changed. It’s a little bolder and, we think, more reflective of New York and the region. We’ve also re-merchandised the floor plan to make it tighter and easier for buyers to navigate, with category adjacencies that make more sense.
A number of exhibitors have returned after being away for several years, and we have more than 70 new exhibitors, so there’s a lot for buyers to discover. We want people to be able to come here and do business with the vendors they already know and depend on, while also walking the floor and finding something they weren’t expecting. That balance is really important to us.
Your site talks about “intentional curation,” a balance between scale and intimacy. How do you maintain that balance when selecting exhibitors?
We’re only three months in, so we’re really just getting started, but our strategy going into 2027 is to bring back the anchor companies across each of the primary gift categories.
There are about ten major gift categories in the United States, and we want to make sure we have the best resources in each of them while continuing to introduce new ones. Buyers need to be able to do business with the vendors they already know while still discovering new products and companies.
A lot of that comes down to listening. We talk to buyers and vendors all the time about what they think is missing and who they want to see at the show, and we have a team with a tremendous amount of industry experience to help us act on that feedback. Every member of our sales team has at least ten years in the gift and home industry, so they know the buyers and they understand the market. That knowledge, combined with those longstanding relationships, is incredibly valuable as we rebuild the show.
The show covers gift & lifestyle, jewelry & accessories, and home. Which of these categories is seeing the most interesting growth right now, and why?
Gift and lifestyle is still our largest category today, but based on the demand and outreach we’ve already had, we expect to see significant growth in Home in 2027.
We’re also expecting handcrafted and artisanal products to grow dramatically this winter, both from the U.S. and internationally. New York has always been a very strong market for handmade, and it was historically a really important part of NY NOW. We’ve heard from buyers and vendors alike that they want it back, so that’s something we’re very focused on rebuilding.
The third area is stationery. At the Winter Show, we’ll be partnering with the Greeting Card Association, which we expect will bring significant growth in cards, paper, and everything connected to that industry.
What kind of buyers are you expecting this year: big retail chains, independent boutiques, or a mix? And how do you help them navigate hundreds of brands?
It’s a mix. Based on pre-registration, we know we’ll see larger buyers like TJX and some of the bigger specialty chains like Anthropologie, but the majority of our buyer base is independent specialty retail, particularly independent gift stores.
We also have a very strong museum store community, with most of the major museum stores in the region attending, as well as a number of interior designers looking for decorative items for their projects.
That mix has always been part of what makes NY NOW interesting. Buyers can come in knowing exactly who they need to see, but there’s also an opportunity to walk the floor, experience a product in person, talk to the person behind it and find something they didn’t know they were looking for. You can’t always replicate that kind of discovery online.
Looking ahead to the next Winter and Summer Markets, what are your short-term expansion plans, and what can we expect from the next winter edition?
Our plan for the Winter Show is to grow at least 50 percent from where we are today, possibly more, which would probably mean adding another 200 vendors.
We’ll be co-locating with the Greeting Card Association, which we’re announcing tomorrow, and launching a Handmade Division. We’re also very focused on rebuilding the home category in 2027, from decorative accessories to tabletop and housewares. That includes everything from fine china and kitchenware to table linens and other kitchen textiles, all of which have historically been strong categories for the New York market.
As we bring those vendors in, we’ll work with them to understand who their target buyers are and make sure we’re reaching those buyers as well. For us, it’s not about growth simply for the sake of growth. We want to rebuild the categories buyers are asking for and make NY NOW a place where they can accomplish a meaningful amount of their buying in one trip. If we can give them the brands they already rely on, introduce them to new resources and make the whole experience easier, then we’re doing our job.
What makes Rockview Management Group different from other trade show organizers in the industry?
I think what’s unusual about us is that we’re a small, privately owned, independent show organizer. That’s fairly unique right now, as most of the other trade show organizers in this industry are large corporations or owned by private equity.
That independence gives us a lot of flexibility. We’re nimble, we can make decisions quickly and we can stay very close to our customers. When buyers and exhibitors tell us what they need, we can listen and respond without having to make decisions based on what’s best for the next quarterly report. Instead, we can focus on what we believe is best for the show and the industry it serves.
The other piece is community, because this is a very relationship-driven industry. A lot of the exhibitors and buyers here today have already commented that the show feels different. There’s a warmth to it. It feels friendly and more like a partnership.
That’s incredibly gratifying because it’s exactly what we want. NY NOW should obviously be a place where people come to do business, but we also want it to be somewhere people genuinely want to be – where they see people they know, meet people they don’t, and build relationships that continue long after the show is over.
