Market Updates

Ellen C. Wells

The COVID-19 crisis is impacting everything. If you were hoping to get some gift and non-hort buying done at a market this year, you likely won’t.

One of the biggest market centers—International Market Centers with markets in Atlanta, High Point, North Carolina and Las Vegas announced that they and their digital innovation division, IMC di, will offer free subscriptions and transactions through year-end on ShopZio, its B2B digital platform.

Said IMC CEO Bob Maricich, “While ensuring the health and safety of our staff and customers is our top priority, we also have been able to start planning for recovery and we will use our virtual market tools to help our customers do the same. To that end, we are offering gift, home and apparel suppliers virtual market tools—at no charge through the end of the year—to help our customers maintain visibility, market available products and transact business digitally as recovery begins.”

ShopZio’s B2B platform facilitates product and resource discovery and will be linkable directly from IMC’s market websites—AmericasMart.com, IMCHightPointMarket.com and LasVegasMarket.com. This will enable referrals to vendors’ e-commerce platforms.

As of press time, IMC markets in Atlanta, North Carolina and Las Vegas were still closed to the public. Visit the website www.imcenters.com for updates. GP