NEW YORK, NY; August 14, 2023—NY NOW, once known as the NY International Gift Fair, is in the best sense a more compact show than pre-Covid.

Producer Emerald Expositions has streamlined a show that prior to the pandemic was already losing some of its mojo to the huge and unwieldy Atlanta [Gift & Accessories] Market by offering vendors more smaller exhibiting options while the larger exhibitors have reduced the space they have on the show floor.

Also, some of the exhibitors that were previously housed in shows co-located with NY NOW have simply been incorporated here, including many letterpress companies.

It all works, since the store buyers are largely the same, though I did not speak to buyers to get a sense of how they find the re-constituted format. Overall, for me, the show has a more curated feel to it.

Those half-booths and tabletops are better suited to the startups that have always made this show interesting. To paraphrase New York’s WFUV-FM, discovery starts here.

Key to NY NOW’s current feel at the Javits Center (it runs through Wednesday afternoon 8/16/23) is also the integration of those smaller booths alongside the larger ones rather than relegating them to the sides or rear of the hall. It makes for much better exploring and heightens the opportunity for sussing out those new vendors and products.

Mind you, the show still has over 1000 exhibitors. Small is a relative term.

I hadn’t attended since February 2020, just before Covid shut down the exposition industry (not to mention everything else).

In 2020 cannabis and CBD products were widely offered; there were still vendors in those segments this year, but they weren’t an overwhelming presence. That could be a function of being more dispersed in the room. Or perhaps it just got more specialized, with a focus on, for example, mushrooms, including such offerings as Popadelics (crunchy mushroom chips, already available at Walmart and elsewhere); SuperMush bottled mouth sprays and mints; and Immorel Beverages, a line of sparkling teas “helping the general population access the powerful benefits of mushrooms without the bullshit of wellness culture.” Well, well, well, indeed.

From a design standpoint, two looks jumped out at me: High gloss on homewares, including Graziani’s Meloria ball candles which, except for their size, could be mistaken for pool balls, and Fine Lumens’s “personal lights” that might be used as a supersized flashlight or a desk/night table lamp; and fluted (Origami’s ceramic drip coffee makers) and spiral elements (Morocco’s Apartment F candle sticks and vases).

A few individual products:

Palmpress’s collapsible, light weight silicone and steel single-cup coffee maker, which requires no paper (or other) filters. Ideal for travel or an office.

Two items that speak to my previous life as a rock and roll critic: Wicker Woodworks’s LP storage cubes and related furniture; and a New York Pop garbage can from Cussso satirizing a certain New York newspaper to which I contributed for 12 years.

Finally, I didn’t know that doggie bath bombs are a thing, but apparently they are; perhaps more surprising is that there are cat bath bombs, too. I guess anything to get kitty into the water???