Bustling NAMM Show Propels Dealers, Vendors Into The New Year
What a rush! With another NAMM show in the books, the time has come to reflect on four days packed with excitement, fellowship, mutual inspiration and a whole lot of great music. From January 23 to 26, tens of thousands of music products retailers, manufacturers, distributors, educators, musicians and fans flocked to the Anaheim Convention Center for our industry’s leading trade exposition, all of them eager to experience the NAMM show’s unmatched combination of new products, education and training, and networking. Based on what The Retailer’s editorial team and I witnessed, the show delivered in spades, sending the masses home with renewed inspiration and uplifted spirits.
For years, NAMM President/CEO Joe Lamond and I have gone back and forth about people’s tendency to focus on NAMM show numbers. Questions typically sound something like, “How many exhibitors, occupying how many net square feet of floor space, attracted how many registrants to this year’s show?” Lamond has a deep personal connection to MI retail, and he correctly makes the point that store owners, operators and managers like you aren’t concerned with whether the NAMM show grew by one percent or by four percent; your fellow retailers and you just want sales to be strong, the industry to be healthy and the next generation of music makers to be cultivated. You might rhetorically ask, “Sure, NAMM had a good show, but how does that translate to me making sales?”
However, because NAMM is aligned so closely with the music products industry—and because it brings together such a large percentage thereof—I believe strongly that the show is a gauge of our segment broadly: A growing show is an auspicious sign for all of us, whereas any contraction would be a bright