sydneyretailfestival.com.au

After chasing me for a year, I was told this would be a great opportunity to introduce my brand to the market as it's ac"trade show"
In three days there were no businesses looking for trade. Did not meet anyone except students.
Not one member of the event introduced themselves. All the stalls business owners paid varied prices. Such a scam will never work with these unprofessional business again.

Next year I would like to see more Mens apparel brands and Mens accessories brands. Lots of good women's and kids brands, some okay mens swim and street brands, more mens evening wear options please. Thanks!

Extremely poorly organised Charge $4,000 for a both that had no foot traffic and no buyers. If you are a designer and are unsure of participating or not I highly urge you to invest the money into online marketing and trying to grow your presence online. Retail is such a dying trade as it is, boutiques no longer visit trade shows the visit Agency show rooms. Drive around and organise your own meetings with boutiques they are more likely to respond to personal interaction rather than at a trade event.

After the first day there where at least 50+ exhibitors who stood up and spoke with the organiser of the event and some of which actually recorded this scenario expressing disappointment and raining concern on the overall event. This resulted to the organiser promising to do his best to make up for it the following day by sending out more emails to boutiques to attend, the result was the same, no buyers or foot traffic.

Not only did the Sydney Retail Team handle every case unprofessionally to over 50 unhappy & confirmed designers they also decided to block and delete us all of instagram in hope that we wouldn't catch onto them wanting to run a 2020 and 2021 event.

It's not worth the head ache, if you are unsure please personally reach out to any of the past designers who exhibited. Don't trust the reviews in here stating 5 star ratings the are only trying to get ahead before the next exhibition.

This was just a poorly organised event, you are better off investing the money into your own marketing campaigns, pop up stores!

Qld brands need the exposure!
Please hold next event in Brisbane or Sunshine Coast, so many exciting new brands on our pretty little coast ;)

Be super careful and avoid this mob. Total scam. Lots of angry vendors last year. Multiple disputes with fair trading. They need to be shut down. Do not pay for a stand with them!

It has been incredibly worthwhile taking part in these events over the last few years for my business. I've done all but one of them. Our business supports the Fashion industry and supply chain with services. The team are great to work with, the events look amazing and we always walk away with lots of new clients and leads to follow up.

I'm looking forward to being involved next year and beyond. Keep up the good work guys! Dan

Good range of brands on display, worthwhile seminars, runway was awesome, admittedly I only caught a few mins of the show. Only constructive comment would be easier parking options and more vegan/veg food options available pls for next time :)

The organizers have no genuine buyers - only some industry contacts to stage this fraudulent event. They should be exposed so they cannot fool any more people in the future.
I also want to question these 'contacts' who are associating with this scam and because of their help the organizers are creating a convincing yet fake image of a successful event.

A really Disgusting Disappointing event!

The organisers behind this event over promised and under delivered. Hardly any exhibitors connected with genuine buyers let alone got sales. Yup, there were buyers there, but not the 2500 we were promised. Not even a fraction of that number and the ones that were there weren't overly motivated to buy.
If the organisers read this, a piece of advice... instead of putting the time and effort you do into prospecting new exhibitors, maybe you'd be better to put that effort in getting buyers to come.
And for exhibitors... If you're thinking about doing this event... DON'T.

I am a retailer who attended last year. I thought it was really good.
I liked the seminars. There was a lot of variety with the exhibitors. I picked up 5 new labels, swim and resort brands.
I have been to gift events before but nothing like this that focussed on fashion.
Keep up the good work guys, I look forward to attending next year.

This show was a complete scam we are now at a loss over $4000 in expenses. There was not one single order we made over our time there. As many of the people that walked through with fashion students, emerging designers and people trying to sell their patterns to us. You will not make any money if you are a wholesaler wanting to attend this event. It is utterly disgusting that they are doing this again when over 30 wholesale customers did not make an order during the Sydney Retail Festival in September 2019

Thank you MRF team! You have all been wonderfully helpful and supportive through the entire process, I look forward to working with you guys next year, I'm super excited.
Tan x

They sold me a dream, told me they would give me a list of attendees and potential buyers in my category which I could invite to visits my stand.
The list contained approximately 120 potential buyers. I called 99% of the people on the list and also sent them emails with invite and look book.
Not one of those people said they were attending the Sydney Retailshow.
I tried to call Sarah and left a message for her to call me back as I was confused why no one on the list was attending.
No one returned my call.
Apart from the amount charged from SRF for the stand I paid for airfares for two people and accommodation food and transportation, time for look book /invite/and costs to advertise.
I am very disappointed wasted time and money.

This is not a genuine trade event and is a complete scam. Do not waste your money!

A promise of "genuine" buyers consisted of fashion students or aspiring designers looking to steal ideas.

Don't be fooled by the well designed marketing collateral or heresy venue, this is a scam!

I also took part in the Melbourne and Sydney Retail Festival and you think I would have learnt my lesson after first one in Melbourne which was a total disaster and waste of time and money. They promised big buying groups... none of which were there... that is nobody interacted with them or sold to them.
A lot of exhbitors were very angry after Melbourne event and demanded a refund and made formal complaints etc... the organiser hides behind fancy reports and data... but truth is I have never been asked to give feedback or do a review!
So this year in a moment of "craziness"I thought I would give them another go seeing as they were in Sydney and they told me that "they had evolved and they have a great event since the first one in Melbourne"... so I thought ok they probably have improved since I had not seen anything to make me question them. BIG BIG MISTAKE... why why did I believe them I don't know. The Sydney event was a disaster, there was no buyers only students and industry people trying to sell us the exhibitors services... like accounting and insurance etc... waste of time! By end of first day most of the exhibitors approached orrganisers and demanded answers... a lot wanted to pack up and leave but were threatened if we did that we would be breaking the contract! Since then I know that there has been many many complaints with Department of Fair Trading about this group... It is a complete waste of time and money so be warned and make the right decision don't be fooled like so many of us. Interesting thing... there was another site which had lots of bad reviews about them but it appears to have been deleted... that is very suspicious in itself. If they have nolthing to hide then they should be happy to be transparent and show good and BAD reviews!

DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME OR MONEY AS THERE ARE NO BUYERS JUST STUDENTS WHO ACT AS BUYERS TO MAKE THE EVENT LOOK BUSY. Scammed!

Great event to check out if you are in the fashion or retail space. Lots of brands and supply chain business for the industry on show. I was surprised that all of the seminars were FREE! There were some really good speakers in the mix. I look forward to attending again as a retailer and finding some new brands to work with

The Sydney Retail Festival is nothing more than a scam!

We attended the show in September with huge expectations as we were promised genuine buyers, informative and inspirational talks by 'leading professionals and industry leaders' instead we got an empty show and speakers who repeated themselves over and over, couldn't respond to questions asked and DID NOT EVEN WALK AROUND THE SHOW or INTERACT WITH THE STALL HOLDERS! The 'buyers' they had on the panels avoided the stalls and made a quick exit after they preached their 'industry knowledge'. One thing they made very clear was that they did not buy from the Sydney Retail Festival and had no intention of buying in the future.

DAY 1 was a ghost town. The only people who walked through and interacted with our stall were students who were there to listen to the speakers and other brands and services who were there to pitch their businesses to us for FREE!

Day 2 was no better except for the fact that the organisers seemed to be making a point of walking the attendees through the event. None of which actually went into any of the stalls or interacted with the stalls and there was still no genuine buyers.

We were also told that we were getting an early bird discount but in fact we paid more than most of the stalls around us some of which had double the size stalls and were on corner positions.

We were also provided a list of buyers/boutiques that we were told were category and brand specific and had been put together for us to also reach out to. SRF claimed they had already reached out to all of these boutiques and had a great response rate with many of them already registered to attend. This was another LIE!
The boutiques that responded to our invites had never been contacted by the SRF and were being bombarded by us, the stall holders and they had no intention of attending.

The video they have just released is also a complete lie and paints a very different picture to what was actually going on at the event! DO NOT BE FOOLED!

Overall it was an extremely disappointing event and a complete waste of time and money! We do not want anyone else to fall into this trap!

We came out lucky in the end, only that the fellow stallholders we had met were all inspiring and genuine people unlike the organisers of the SRF!

Hi Team, I miss working with you guys on the events! I see 2021 MRF is looking great, so many awesome brands involved. I look forward to joining you guys in Feb next year

I took part in the Sydney Retail Festival 2019 as an exhibitor. The event was held in The Venue, Alexandria. The venue itself (not affiliated with SRF) was awesome and the warehouse that was hired had no complaints. Unfortunately, that's where the positives stop!

We signed up early when the registrations opened. We were told that there will be multiple promotions run on their social media pages and as blog post - none of this happened. We were also told that there will be multiple videos taken of our stalls as well as interviews done - yeap, none of that happened (I actually thought I might have been unlucky, but after speaking to all exhibitors in our category, no one in our category got an interview).

A buyer list for our category was provided at the last minute. When we tried to call them, they were highly upset, and one buyer actually threatened to sue us for making an 'unsolicited call'! What was more surprising is that almost all of them had never heard of Sydney Retail Festival, and the rest simply laughed at the idea.

This wasn't our first fashion event - we've done international fashion events, stalls, markets, popups etc. But a first for SRF. The booth/stall location could have been better but that is a minor concern. The fact that you could not bring your own fixtures, but had to hire their contractors, which incidentally was supplied to use at the last moment (after months of chasing up), only to find out the costs for basic necessities WAS PHENOMENALLY EXPENSIVE! (If you are going to go to this event, be prepared to fork out extra 2-3 grand for just fixtures (electricity, lights, wall hangings).

Now, all of these can be overlooked if we only gotten some exposure, right? Wrong! The company (SRF) advertises that this is a premium fashion event, where the best of the industry buyers attend. Yeah, nah mate! We had lots of people with buyer tags come visit our booth, except they started selling us seo services, graphic design services, facebook marketing services - there was literally a guy who brought a suitcase full of presentation materials to showcase his portfolio! Yea, they all had buyer tags. The ones we did end up talking to, we later found out they either never worked at the company they said they did, or had worked there 15 years ago as a buyer. Come on mate!

Anyway, if you thinking about attending Sydney Retail Festival, I would advise you to save that money and go on a holiday instead!

I just watched a couple of your seminars online through vimeo, they are very good. The sustainability seminar, hosted by the head of sustainability and sourcing from The Iconic, Jaana, was particularly good. Thanks for making these available :)

I exhibited last year and did well. I picked up some new accounts, including the big online retailer that I was after. I am a new brand based in Sydney. Looking forward to doing it again.

Parking was difficult, car park was full.
Apart from that it was a good event.
If you are planning to go, Uber or Taxi instead