Today on Manhattan’s West side, thousands of people are funneling into the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center for a trade-focused gathering. Not an unusual occurrence at Javits, but the expo taking place today and tomorrow is unusual in a number of ways. Bild Expo is put on by iconic Manhattan-based electronics retailer B&H, but despite the fact that the show is being run by a merchant, the goal of the event is not to sell products — or in fact to make money at all.
Bild Expo launched in 2023 to celebrate B&H’s 50th anniversary. At the time, the company wasn’t even sure if it would do another one, but that first show was such a success that B&H has brought it back two years later for two days — June 17 and 18, 2025.
“We were coming up on our 50th anniversary and we wanted to mark it, both with the industry and with our customers,” said Jeff Gerstel, Chief Marketing Officer at B&H Photo in an interview with Retail TouchPoints. “The whole idea was to bring the B&H brand to life for a two-day celebration of what we do. Rule number one was it had to be free [for attendees]. We weren’t there to sell anything; we weren’t there to make money. We wanted to create an event for the benefit of the attendees, with one simple goal — that they leave having learned something, been inspired by something or someone and gotten access to the brands they love and the creators they follow in a very humble, low-key and intimate setting.”
B&H’s Signature Focus on Customer Experience, Translated into an Expo
Most trade shows are profit-making endeavors, so to understand the community-over-money mentality of Bild Expo, you have to understand a little bit about B&H.
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The name, Bild, is a subtle nod to the heritage of B&H and its founders in the Orthodox Jewish community: “bild” means “image” in Yiddish. Since its founding in 1973 as a small camera shop, B&H has placed a premium on open-handed expertise. And that approach hasn’t changed over the past 50 years, even as technology has become more complex and interwoven in day-to-day life.
“B&H has an extremely high-touch, old school approach to taking care of customers,” explained Gerstel. “A lot of what we sell is expensive, complicated gear, and [our focus is on] helping people make the right decisions for them. In some ways it’s a throwback to something that I don’t know even exists anymore. It’s a very much a long-term view — we’re interested in customers for their lifetime, not to make a sale today. Nobody’s on commission. If people leave without buying something, that’s fine, no one has sales targets. It’s all about, how do we take care of the customer? It’s very easy to say, but very hard to do.”
This attitude is the reason generations of professionals and hobbyists have returned again and again to B&H’s Manhattan superstore despite ample opportunity to buy their electronics elsewhere. And given this, it’s perhaps not so surprising after all that the company would choose to host an expensive, multi-day event dedicated to the art supported by the tools it sells, an event for which the only financial goal is to hopefully cover costs.
“If we can more or less cover our costs, that’d be nice, but again, the approach for all these years has been, if we do the right thing, people will come back,” said Gerstel. “Maybe [the show ends up] costing money to produce, but over the long term it’ll create benefits for the brand and for the exhibitors who participated.”
A Chance to Help Customers ‘Unlock Their Creativity’
Exhibitors at the event — which this year includes more than 250 brands such as Canon, Sony, Nikon, DJI, Kodak and Fujifilm — pay to participate, but they clearly also see the value. Not only has the number of exhibitors increased from the 2023 show, but many returning exhibitors also have increased the size of their presence this year.
“This is a chance for the industry to show what we can do,” said Gerstel. “We’re all actively competing — people have limited budgets, and we’re not selling anything, for the most part, that people need to survive. But we feel that if the industry bands together and puts its best foot forward to this audience, it really creates magical outcomes. So part of the goal [of Bild] is to kind of reframe the job and the objective [to show] that the competition isn’t the people at the next table. The purpose here is to unlock the creativity of the audience and by doing so, we lift all ships and the industry prospers.”
Nurturing a New Kind of B&H Customer: The Content Creator
That industry has seen a big boost in the past decade thanks to the rise of online content creators, and Bild Expo, while still nurturing B&H’s core photography clientele, is also dedicated to this primarily younger consumer set.
About one-third of the more than 100 conference sessions at this year’s show are dedicated to content creation, with presenters from major platforms such as YouTube and Snapchat as well as a full roster of successful creators sharing insights. These sessions are set alongside a range of workshops and immersive experiences on everything from AI editing to photo lighting, production quality and more.
“One of the big surprises in 2023 was how young the audience was,” said Gerstel. “Content creation has brought a whole new tsunami of customers into the industry. So this year I would say 40% to 50% of attendees at the show will be under 40 years old. [The industry] has been really successful at broadening the tent and welcoming people in who have a big desire to learn more and get better. For Bild, how to balance the traditional still photography world with this emerging, very different animal and have the two coexist has been a big part of the fun.”
‘Making a Large Industry Feel Small for a Couple of Days’
B&H executives also will appear on stage, but the primary way the company shows up at the event is with more than 300 employees on the show floor helping to run different experience areas. “Mostly, it’s a chance for us to interact with the many attendees on a one-on-one basis and help them grow their talent,” explained Gerstel.
Attendees at the event also will have ample opportunity to test out new gear — and buy it if they want. In fact, one of the big draws for attendees is specials on the gear being showcased, although whether or not they buy it at the show, online or decide to walk a few blocks to buy it at the B&H store, is inconsequential to the B&H team.
What’s more important to Gerstel and his team is recreating the sense of community that attendees experienced at the 2023 event. “I remember one comment from an attendee [in 2023] who said, ‘It was like an ocean of photographers, and I was one of them,’” shared Gerstel. “It’s just this group of people getting together and enjoying each other’s company.”
Gerstel doesn’t want to commit to a regular cadence for the event, partly because he and his team don’t want it to “become a routine thing” like other trade shows, and also because putting on a trade show is a lot of work, especially for a company where that’s not the core business. “As magical as the event was [in 2023], it really stretched us; everyone here has a day job,” he said.
“We create this atmosphere where a large industry feels very small for a couple of days,” Gerstel added. “It’s about the love of the craft; that’s what gets celebrated. I remember speaking to one of our founders, and he said, ‘Look, our business approach is very simple. If we do the right thing, people will come back. It’s literally as simple as that.’ There’s a belief that the commercial side will take care of itself if we do a great job on the customer side, and that’s the story of this event and this company.”
