Global retailers to gather in New York for new industry perspective

NEW YORK -- Some 38,000 people from 99 countries are expected to gather in New York City soon for a new industry perspective by meeting visionary people, hearing ideas and experiencing technologies.

The grand gathering of the retail industry is named NRF 2020: Retail's Big Show, a centerpiece of NRF Retail Week, and runs from Jan 11 to Jan 14 at NYC's Jacob K. Javits Convention Center.

As one of the largest of its kind, the show features over 800 solution providers, more than 100 Exhibitor Big Ideas sessions with some 400 speakers, The Innovation Lab for attendees to test drive the newest retail technologies, and The Startup Zone that showcases emerging technologies from the industry's leading startups.

With the burgeoning of e-commerce, traditional brick-and-mortar stores are under increasing pressures in the United States. According to Coresight Research, Forever 21, Walgreens, Dressbarn, GameStop, Gap and other chains closed over 9,300 stores in 2019, the biggest year for store shutdowns ever in the United States.

Meanwhile, according to statistics released by the U.S. Census Bureau on Nov 19, the estimates of US retail e-commerce sales in the first three quarters of 2019 grew by 12.0 percent, 14.0 percent, and 16.9 percent, respectively, from the same period a year ago.