The Dallas Markets Center consists of six
buildings, housing headquarters for the
Trade Mart, Home Furnishings Mart,
the decorative center market hall, World
Trade Center and the Apparel Mart,
built in 1964.
The Apparel Mart, Dallas is the second
largest wholesale fashion operation
in the country.
The five story Aperol mark covers four
city blocks, providing showroom space
for over 1500 clothing and fashion
accessory manufacturers to exhibit their
loans to retail buyers,
demand for permanent showrooms at the
market has created an extensive expansion
plan to add two more floors to the
building, making the Apparel Mart Dallas
the largest market of its kind in the
world.
The expansion is due to be completed by
October of 1979.
Apparel buyers from all over the U.S.
and foreign countries gather at Dallas's
Apparel Mart five times a year to inspect
and place orders for all kinds and styles
of clothing and fashion accessories
to the ordinary person.
The huge complex is a confusing maze
of showrooms, looking much like
a giant shopping mall.
Buyers roam the corridors, often lured
into showrooms by aggressive sales
persons to sell
merchandise. The mart offers a glittery
show with dazzling models,
luxuriously outfitted showrooms
and offerings of food and drinks for the
buyers.
At the recent midwinter fashion market
in September, fourteen thousand
nine hundred buyers converged on Dallas
to visit the showrooms of over 8000
manufacturers, reviewing new lines
and talking prices.
The choices the buyers must make colors,
styles and prices would be enough
to make the average shopper pull out hair
and despair.
But this shopping spree is not for fun.
The decisions of the buyers are
important.
Buyers must be confident of filling their
store racks with clothing, which will
sell.
Buyers are often gambling, ordering
merchandise this year to the tune of one
and three quarters billion dollars.
Well, how are these important decisions
made? Clothing retailers must
always be looking ahead, spotting
future fashion trends and ordering
clothing lines for us.
Several months later, delivery
orders placed at the end of summer can be
expected for delivery at retail stores
in November or December for holiday
or midwinter sales buyers
most research and digests much
information from many sources to make the
right buys.
We work through a lot of information
we get from our offices in New York.
We travel to Europe and look at the
trends there.
Usually they start earlier in
Europe, although we're getting closer and
closer now that the American designers
are so important and
we get fashion information from
the magazines.
We attend the fashion seminars in New
York, we
really just get all the information we
can and then we just observe what's
happening in life styles.
We look to see what the entertainers
are wearing, what people are wearing
on the streets in different markets, and
then collect all that information
and then look to see what's in the market
and what the trends seem to
reflect.
Those things that we've seen,
although other cities such as Atlanta,
Chicago and Los Angeles have major
fashion wholesaling centers, New
York is undisputably the capital of the
US Fashion World Apparel
Mart. Dallas ranks third in sales volume,
bowing only to New York and Los Angeles.
Many top designers bring their cream of
the crop creations to Dallas for reaction
in fashion circles.
It is said that if a fashion item sells
in Dallas, it will be successful
nationally.
Dallas market is becoming more and more
important every season, and
the top management for most companies
does come down for the Dallas market now.
So we work with them very
strongly here.
Do you feel that you create trends
when you buy certain pieces
of merchandise and display them?
Well, we really don't create
the trend, but we might create the
atmosphere for it.
I think a lot of that is seeing
what's in the different markets,
what's important in dresses and
accessories and sportswear
and pulling together a theme
behind it, but pulling
it together within the store.
We might make it more obvious to the
customer if that's creating the trends
and playing an advertising campaign
behind it.
But the trends probably
usually it's created initially
from the market, from the designers.
What we do is just try to make it
understandable to the customer
what.