Following its recently concluded merger with AmericasMart in Atlanta, International Market Centers (IMC) has appointed a new executive leadership team with 150+ years of collective experience in the gift, home furnishings, and apparel industries: Greg Avitabile, EVP/ Operations; Dorothy Belshaw, EVP, Chief Marketing & Digital Officer; Scott Eckman, EVP, President of Furniture & Home Décor Leasing; Bill Lacey, EVP & Chief Financial Officer; JoAnn Miller Marshall, EVP & President of Tradeshow Leasing; Carrie Messina, SVP/Human Resources; and Dave Savula, EVP, President of Gift & Apparel Leasing.
Working from offices in Las Vegas, High Point, and Atlanta, IMC will function as one company with one mission, implementing best practices across the organization and leveraging expertise and customer relationships to support corporate goals and improve the customer experience.
“This thoughtful, thorough, and strategic corporate structure positions our exceptional leadership and their teams to have maximum impact on the business and drive enhanced value to our customers,” says Bob Maricich, CEO of IMC. “We remain committed to continued investment, customer focus, and sustained growth across all of our properties and Markets. We have a proven record of making significant investments in our Markets and this sets the stage to amplify our commitment to providing the most effective, efficient, and compelling B2B platform for both our buyers and our tenants.”
With IMC as its corporate brand and parent company, all three venues and the individual Markets will retain their unique identities, branding, and differentiating features.
Permanent showroom leasing responsibilities will be industry-based and market-wide for furniture and home décor. Ensuring that customers can maximize results and achieve national distribution, IMC will extend its current centralized “key account” management structure for tenants who participate in both High Point and Las Vegas, to now include tenants who also participate in Atlanta. Gift and apparel leasing will continue to be managed by venue in Atlanta and Las Vegas.
Tradeshow leasing will apply expertise and expanded resources to grow existing temporary presentations in Atlanta, High Point, and Las Vegas. IMC’s temporary exhibit sales teams will be campus-specific, better enabling existing staff to maintain the unique personality and differentiating features of each Market. Tradeshow leasing will also identify opportunities to maximize occupancy at the new Expo at World Market Center Las Vegas which will break ground in January and is scheduled to open in July 2020. The new state-of-the-art facility will be built for optimal tradeshow presentation and will be contiguous to Las Vegas Market’s buildings. Totaling more than 300,000 gross square feet, the new venue will accommodate more than 1,000 temporary exhibitors during major gift and home Markets.
Marketing will be a centralized function enhancing the end-to-end customer experience, driving increased buyer acquisition across all Markets, and developing digital tools and services to improve the at-Market experience for buyers and tenants.
Beyond these customer-facing strategies, IMC will centralize and streamline Accounting and Lease Administration to create efficiencies for customers; plus Information Technology will roll out upgraded and state-of-the art systems and business applications to help provide seamless vendor support. This significant upgrade is part of an extensive and on-going strategic IT evaluation to create best-in-class systems and infrastructure to enable IMC to scale and extend capabilities beyond the existing portfolio.
“We know our success is in direct correlation with the success of our tenants and the satisfaction of the buyers. And we remain committed to creating and hosting Markets that continually improve and evolve to serve their needs,” Maricich states.
In tandem with organizational improvements, IMC is also conducting a long-range planning process to identify initiatives to drive IMC’s next stage of growth and development. High-level initiatives include: leveraging national reach of the combined organization to accelerate buyer acquisition in all Markets and expand product offerings in relevant new verticals while investing significant capital in public space improvements at all locations in addition to construction of the new Expo in Las Vegas.
“The planning process, which should be completed by year-end, incorporates quantitative and qualitative third-party research of our customers and our customers’ customers to identify their needs and develop markets and tools to enrich their experience and drive enhanced value,” Maricich adds. “IMC remains committed to sustained growth and enrichment of the business and our customers can expect continued capital re-investment across all three campuses.”
