Trinket market retools prices at souvenir and gift show

Even though her staple package of souvenir-wrapped chocolate bars retails in relatively expensive airport shops at $12.95, Rhonda Ivie's customers wanted something still cheaper.

So Ivie, the president of Las Vegas Sweets, chose the Las Vegas Souvenir and Resort Gift Show to promote a new line of small bags of chocolate-covered treats, including cashews, peanuts and bite-size graham cracker squares, to retail for $5 each.

"Retailers need to have something at that price," she said. "In this economy, it makes that much of a difference. And if people don't have a lot of money to spend on clothes on a vacation, they can fall back on comfort food."

Likewise, Ashraf "Alex" Khalaf, owner of the Las Vegas-based jewelry distributor Alexander Kalifano, has had to tailor his product line to tighter consumer wallets. Seven years ago, he said, Kalifano's average item wholesaled for $85; now it's down to $4.

This has meant the company, which places merchandise in stores in several Strip hotel-casinos, has gone from relying heavily on gemstone globes, which have countries delineated in different colors of stone, to cubic zirconia bracelets, dice key chains with the pips made of Swarovski crystal and other small items.

"I hope it gets better some time soon," Khalaf said. "But in reality, I don't think it will."

The show draws together trinket marketers and stores for two different audiences: the neighborhood cutesy gift shops, and souvenir outlets that sell items from T-shirts to shot glasses with the location printed on them, known in the trade as a "name drop."

But most of the exhibitors on both sides concluded that the market has been limping since the economy plunged three years ago.

The show itself, one of several produced across the country by Urban Expositions, has flourished because of a major overhaul of its marketing strategy a couple years ago. Attendance has risen 60 percent in the past two years, to about 4,000 for the show that ends today at the Las Vegas Convention Center, said Urban Expositions President Doug Miller. The number of exhibitors has doubled, to 1,000, he said.

"We found that people were not cutting back on what they were buying, but on their travel budgets," Miller said.

With that in mind, he redirected much of the show's marketing dollars from traditional enrollment reminders to subsidized hotels rooms. The number of people designated as VIPs, who received free lodging at The Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, was raised about sixfold, to 300 this year. Others were offered a $15.99-a-night rate at Stratosphere.

"We are doing this because we found that it works," he said.

Likewise, the vendors found that lower prices work. Lin Lloyd, owner of Chinook Winds in the San Diego suburb of San Marcos, Calif., said sales of totem poles and ceremonial masks in the style of Northwest Indian tribes have risen to prerecession levels. Her primary market is tourists on Alaska cruises.

But price has factored in the rebound, she said. The carvings that she wholesales are knockoffs made in Indonesia at a fraction of the cost of native-made versions.

"We're for people who want nice art pieces but can't afford something that's native-made," she said.

She also displayed miniature masks and totems for tourists unwilling to pay for full size.

For Alexander Kalifano, "The market has been a big shift for us and not an easy one," Khalaf said. "People either don't have money or are still being conservative."

Contact reporter Tim O'Reiley at
toreiley@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5290.