Do You Need to Go to IRCE?

IRCE stands for the Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition, the major trade show for E-retailers. It is being held June 15-18 at the Boston Convention Center. There is definitely a culture split in the internet business: there is the corporate internet world — ebay.com, Target.com, Overstock.com, Meijers, Kohl’s — you get the idea. Then there are us scruffy guys — upstarts, guerillas, part-timers, millionaires-to-be. IRCE is corporate. It’s THE trade show for E-retailers but it’s overkill if you’re just starting out and working on the basics of building your empire. There are separate “tracks” you can attend. There is a Track B: Corporate Management and a Trade D: Small Retailers (as well as tracks for Operations, Marketing…) But judging from the conferences and workshops “Small Retailers” is for “Mid-size Retailers” in our humble opinion. (workshops like negotiating with vendors, how to right-size your fulfillment center — fullfillment center?! You mean our garage?). Unless you are mid-sized, Worldwide Brands is a great solution, at least to start. One interesting note: the founders of www.zazzle.com are scheduled to speak. We’ll talk about them in a future post. (But keep this is mind: Zazzle is not a “small retailer” — the Google founders invested $16 million in the company.)

Of course, one day, you may find you have built an empire, and you — or your employees — will need to attend — or exhibit — at this trade show. But for now, just be aware of it — for later. If you do wanna go now, go to www.IRCE.com. The standard 2-Day Conference and workshops pass is $1,295 (early bird special $1,195 before April 1). But like we said, we’d rather invest that two grand into a smart Google Adwords campaign, so we will have much more money to attend later on, if we wanna.