Billion-Dollar Business

Billed as the biggest international bazaar in Western Hemisphere history, the U.S. World Trade Fair brought 3,000 displays and 43 national pavilions into the four floors of Manhattan's Coliseum. For a fort night buyers from the Americas looked over motor scooters from Italy and hi-fi equipment from Japan, inspected silks from Hong Kong and a pair of Queen Victoria's pantaloons exhibited by Britain's Lux-Lux, Ltd. (underwear), sampled coffee from Brazil and champagne from Israel. Last week, is the show closed, its private U.S. organizers tallied some of the handsome results.

More than 600,000 persons paid to see the fair ("Around the World for 90-c-," said the advertisements), and 127,780 buyers went in free. Some exhibitors could hardly believe the size of their sales. Belgium's Boisiree Van Dan Heuvel, which usually sells 200 cases of beer a month in the U.S., signed one deal to deliver 82,000 cases in the next year. Textilemaker Maya de Mexico sold the output of its entire plant for the coming year. And the overall statistic was enough to make the show's backers schedule a repeat performance next year: orders at the fair totaled about $1 billion.

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