The Show Goes On For Crow Holding’s Dallas Market Center

The Show Goes On For Crow Holding’s Dallas Market Center

The Dallas Market Center is riding out the pandemic with new strategies and tactics.



Photo: Dallas Market Center

When the Dallas Market Center opens its winter wholesale market for the gift and home furnishings trade this week it will represent a rather remarkable event for an industry that, like so many, has been impacted by the Covid pandemic.

And for its owners, the giant privately owned developer and operator Crow Holdings, it also signifies its continued confidence that the business-to-business trade show model remains a worthy investment and an ongoing business despite the impact social distancing and safety measures have had on large-scale events .

As with many businesses — retailers, restaurants, travel — the trade show and market center industry has been severely challenged by the pandemic. Many — in fact, most — wholesale shows starting in March 2020 were postponed, often postponed again and very often cancelled all together. Those that were held, here in the U.S. as well as overseas, were severely truncated, with both attendance and numbers of exhibitors down significantly from historical levels.



Many were supplanted or outright replaced by virtual events, held on Zoom and