NRF convention kicks off Monday

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 1/10/2003 2:45:00 PM

New York — The National Retail Federation kicks off its 92nd convention next week at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center with a plethora of seminars and events for retailers. Following is a sampling of seminars.

"Focus on Retail Sectors: Analysts Rate 2002" takes place Monday at 2:15 p.m. and will be moderated by Walter Loeb, Loeb Associates, with analysts Richard Jaffe, UBS Warburg, Dana Cohen, Bank of America, and Lawrence Haverty, State Street Research, participating.

At 4:30 to 5:15 p.m., "Driving Bottom-Line Profits by Sourcing from Global Companies" will discuss how retailers can adopt changes to support this initiative. Roger Esnard, Federated Department Stores, will be one of the speakers.

"Why People Buy Things They Don't Need — Playing to Consumers' Emotions and Desires" is scheduled for Tuesday at 2 p.m. and will include Phil Schneider, Pier 1 Imports, as a speaker. Also at 2 p.m. is "Retail Profitability is a Seven Letter Word: P.R.O.D.U.C.T."

On Wednesday, Andy Ginger, Sears, will be one of several speakers participating in "Private Label Strategies: Today's Retailers, Tomorrow's Brand Managers," from 8:15 a.m. to 9:15 a.m. At 9:30 a.m., designer Michael Graves and John Hockenberry, from Dateline NBC, will be participating in the seminar "Innovate or Die." "Finding the Next Mass Market," at 11 a.m., will explore how to look for and take advantage of trends.