White Plains, NY – GLM has acquired the conference business of Vertical Web Media (VWM) in a move that will establish GLM in the e-commerce sector, a growing area that holds particular appeal to GLM’s trade show customers.
A sizable portion of the companies that take part in the New York International Gift Fair and other retail-oriented GLM shows are involved in e-commerce, and VWM organizes the annual Internet Retailer Conference (IRCE), which it bills as the largest e-commerce event in the world.
“We know from our research that the retailers and suppliers whom GLM supports are in a ‘high-adoption’ phase of online marketing and e-commerce capabilities,” said Charles McCurdy, chairman and CEO of GLM. “IRCE gives us the ability to embed access to credible e-commerce content and suppliers into our existing shows.”
McCurdy said the e-commerce sector currently had a “high degree of fragmentation” with a range of new and established suppliers competing for the attention of retailers in the U.S. and worldwide. GLM planned to get to work immediately on developing co-located e-commerce events at its shows and looking for opportunities to expand the IRCE brand in the U.S., Europe and Asia.
IRCE 2012 was held in June at McCormick Place and attracted nearly 9,000 attendees and 600 exhibitors over four days. IRCE 2013 will be held at the same venue June 4-7.
The transaction announced November 9 also added two smaller conferences to the GLM portfolio: Internet Retailer Mobile Marketing & Commerce Forum and Internet Retailer Web Design and Usability Conference. Terms of the sale were not released.
The VWM events team will continue to run all three conferences as a division of GLM. VWM will also provide marketing support and content development to the conferences and will retain ownership of its databases, websites and Internet Retailer Magazine.
VWM Chairman and Publisher Jack Love said while he was bullish on the prospects of his conference business, the new partnership with GLM was necessary to free up his team to focus on expanding VWM’s media business. “It became obvious we needed a large and professional conference operation to manage the expansion of the Internet Retailer conferences,” he said.
Reach Charles McCurdy at (914) 421-3200 or cmcurdy@glmshows.com; Jack Love at (312) 362-9528 or jack@verticalwebmedia.com
