Business Journals Inc. - Fashion Company Profile

Company Profile

BJI as an independent company ended in April 2016, when UBM plc acquired Business Journals Inc. for $69 million in cash. UBM was already building the largest fashion trade show business in the United States around MAGIC, Project and Coterie, and it folded the BJI shows into that portfolio, co-locating MRket with Project at the Javits Center the same year.

The shows changed hands again two years later: Informa plc completed its acquisition of UBM in June 2018, and the fashion portfolio became part of Informa Markets Fashion, which presents its events today under the Fashion by Informa banner. Its current New York and Las Vegas line-up is built around MAGIC, COTERIE, PROJECT and SOURCING. Some BJI show names, FAME and Moda among them, were still listed on the New York market calendar in 2024, while others, such as MRket and AccessoriesTheShow, were retired as the portfolio consolidated. Anyone exhibiting or attending today deals with Informa, not with the Norwalk company covered below.

History

Business Journals Inc. built its business on two linked halves: business-to-business publications and the trade shows those publications served. The Business Journals Fashion Group described itself as the premier information resource for retailers in the markets it served, with publications claiming one of the largest retail circulations and dominant readership in each of their markets. Its titles covered Women's Fashion Accessories - including leathergoods, fashion jewelry and watches, hosiery, scarves, gloves and raingear - and Men's and Young Men's clothing, sportswear, furnishings and accessories. The Fashion Group was based at 1384 Broadway, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018, while the company's headquarters were at 50 Day Street in Norwalk, Connecticut. Publications on one side, trade shows on the other - media plus events, both aimed at retailers rather than consumers - was the structure that made BJI a fixture of the wholesale fashion calendar.

Its trade shows formed a complete wholesale season. AccessoriesTheShow, at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center in New York City, billed itself as the world's largest and longest-running juried all-accessory trade event, showcasing fashion accessory resources in more than thirty classifications, and ran concurrently with Moda Manhattan and FAME. Its Las Vegas edition ran at The Venetian Resort Hotel concurrently with Moda Las Vegas and MRket, and an AccessoriesTheShow Pavilion edition showcased immediate accessory resources alongside Moda Manhattan. Moda Manhattan, also at the Javits Center, was an upscale trade event providing a concise mix of carefully juried ready-to-wear, from upmarket elegant to sporty fashions, in more than thirty product categories.

FAME, at the Javits Center, was a leading venue for junior and young contemporary fashion resources, with ready-to-wear collections and a large supply of immediate accessory resources. MRKET NY was an exclusive show for the menswear industry, showcasing more than 200 collections of upscale classic and contemporary apparel and accessories; MRKET LV brought the same menswear format to The Venetian in Las Vegas. Read as a portfolio, the shows covered accessories, upscale women's, junior and young contemporary, and menswear, each in New York with a Las Vegas counterpart - which is why the routes on this page run to the fashion trade shows, trade show organizers and fashion calendar areas of Apparel Search.

Those contact details and show descriptions belong to the years before the 2016 acquisition: a buyer or exhibitor today deals with Informa, whose current listings are the place to confirm dates and venues. What the BJI record shows is what its fashion shows were - names, venues, formats and adjacencies, meaning which shows ran concurrently with which - the background needed to interpret years of fashion trade coverage, exhibitor lists and old show directories.

The company also sits in this directory between two media-and-services neighbors in the same letter - the Business of Fashion, a digital media company founded in 2007, and BuzzFlikr, a Los Angeles PR venture built on social networks. Business Journals represented the older infrastructure of the same industry: print circulation, juried floors and a Javits Center calendar. The three together show the fashion business's information layer changing generations inside a single letter of the alphabet.