NRF Sees Record Crowds In 2012

January 17, 2012 by Dave Haynes

CNBC is reporting record crowds for this year’s National Retail Federation conference, with about 24,000 people expected to attend the event in New York.

The NRF is forecasting U.S. retail sales to rise by 3.4 percent, to $2.53 trillion. That would be slower than last year but still faster than GDP growth.

Should you have been there if you are in the retail side of this? Well, maybe, maybe not. It’s a way-expensive show just because it’s in New York – $250/night for rooms (or more) and plus, plus, plus. There are not that many vendors there, and those that are on the floor are mostly co-located with other companies with bigger budgets – which is a nice way to go.

There is a lot of tech on the trade show floor, but the emphasis there is more on store operations than shopper marketing. This is where CTOs and their propellerheads go to look at stuff like retail analytics, supply chain, queue management, transactional and security systems.

Did you go? If so, worth it?