EVENT RECAP

National Retail Federation’s Big Show

Acro Commerce at NRF’s Big Show: A tale of meaningful connections and strategic growth. At the heart of the Javits Center, our team's experience at NRF was a blend of productive networking, insightful encounters, and forward-thinking strategies. Read on to learn how we navigated the event's challenges and opportunities, building partnerships and shaping the future of retail.

The Acro Commerce team recently returned from the National Retail Federation’s (NRF) Big Show at the Javits Center in New York City. Our team had three full days of exhibiting, meeting with partners, clients, and potential future clients, networking events, and various dinners. Spending a few days in New York City is always a welcome opportunity, even in the middle of January with chilly winds mixed in with some rain and snow showers.

Top Takeaways from NRF 2024

Trade Shows are Back

Acro had a presence at numerous trade shows in 2023 for the first time since the COVID-19 pandemic, and they were not extremely well attended for the most part. We cannot say the same for the NRF Big Show — events are back and maybe even bigger than ever. Almost 40,000 people attended this year's event, including over 6200 brands and over 1000 exhibitors, with people coming from over 100 different countries. The size was truly evident, with the exhibition hall taking up two floors and foot traffic being heavy and constant for all three days.

Face-to-Face Meetings Still Matter

Although most of us work from home or in a hybrid role, there is still nothing better than face-to-face meetings to strengthen relationships or opportunities. The Acro team took full advantage of the in-person event.

Connecting Partners — New and Old

The event allowed the Acro team to meet with many of our partners and build rapport with many of our day-to-day contacts. We had numerous interactions with BigCommerce and Shopify, and we were able to spend a great evening with Storyblok — meeting some of their team members for the first time but most certainly not the last. Many of these meetings will directly and indirectly lead to new opportunities for Acro as well as our partners. Building solid partnerships takes work and effort from both teams — connecting with so many of them personally will help foster these relationships moving forward, and there is much excitement about what the future holds.

Generating Opportunities and Leads 

The business development team spent a busy three days interacting with attendees passing by the booth, walking the show floor, and attending numerous networking events, all to generate new leads and opportunities. There is always room for improvement, but overall, we developed some good leads, and the team is already busy following up with them.

Next Steps and Next Year

The entire team who attended has and will be doing follow-ups with numerous team members within the partners we met with, as many next steps were coming out of all of the discussions. In addition, the business development team will also reach out to leads and schedule calls to determine potential opportunities.

There were many takeaways on how we can improve our participation in the event, from changes to booth layout and design to how we attract and engage with visitors to the booth, and even what the perfect shoes to wear when standing for 10 hours are.

Acro has already committed to exhibiting at next year's Big Show, and we expect it to exceed this year's size. Many large organizations such as Walmart and Amazon, which had extremely large booth sizes this year, have increased their booth size for next year and by the end of this year’s event, over 99% of the booths have already been renewed for next year.

NRF Big Show 2024 was an excellent event for Acro Commerce, and now the planning will begin for NRF Big Show 2025.

Want to know which big event we are hitting next? 

Click the image below to sign up for our newsletter and be the first to know.