1,000+ Consumer Brands Head to Brooklyn as Beanstalk Returns to Industry City, Retail’s New York Home Base

Founders and CEOs from Shopify, Dyson and Bombas spend three days on the campus where the 3PLs, robotics firms and brands that power retail already work.

BROOKLYN, NY, UNITED STATES, September 10, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — More than 1,000 of the country’s fastest-growing consumer brands will descend on Industry City on September 15 for Beanstalk, the invite-only event retail founders and CEOs have attended since its inauguration five years ago. Its return to the 35-acre Brooklyn campus for the second year in a row is a nod to what Industry City has been building for years: the retail and e-commerce industry’s home base in New York.

Beanstalk will run from September 15-16 and is built for founders and CEOs of companies doing at $10 million to $2bn in revenue. These two days will rely minimally on a main stage, and instead gravitate around more than 10,000 executive meetings, 100 power lunches of eight people, 50 boardroom sessions and 30 private dinners, primarily hosted across the campus. Attendees span nine retail categories, from food and beverage to apparel, pets, electronics and home.

NBCUniversal is the founding partner, and attendees range from Fortune 500 giants like Shopify, Unilever and Procter & Gamble to breakout brands like Dyson, Away and Bombas. Past guests of honor include Danny Meyer of Shake Shack, longtime Gap CEO Mickey Drexler, AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi and NFL Hall of Famer Larry Fitzgerald Jr.

E-commerce is one of the fastest-growing retail subsectors in New York City, but for decades, the companies powering it, including 3PLs, fulfillment centers, robotics firms and print shops, were priced out of the city. As a result, the events where the industry met happened in hotel ballrooms and convention halls far from where the work got done. Beanstalk instead meets at an innovation campus in Sunset Park, surrounded by the businesses its attendees depend on. An attendee can leave a boardroom session and walk to the 3PL that fulfills its orders, the print shop that makes its packaging and the studio that live-streams their launches.

Among these companies is Highline Commerce, a third-party logistics provider that has grown on campus from 27,000 to 60,000 square feet and fulfills for more than 200 brands, some now doing up to $50 million a year. It fills up to 30% of those orders using humanoid robots from fellow tenant Ultra Robotics, a Y Combinator-backed company whose units run 24 hours a day, one of the first such deployments outside Amazon. Tailored Industry produces made-to-order automated knitwear on site. Gowanus Print Lab screenprints. Puff Media live-streams shopping. Alquist Robotics builds. Le Labo, Strand Bookstore, Adafruit, Stoney Clover Lane and Walmart eyewear supplier M Factory produce, warehouse or ship from the campus.

“We could hold this event anywhere, and every year people assume we will move it to a hotel or a convention center,” said Max Starkman, co-founder of Beanstalk. “We keep it at Industry City because the room we are trying to build already exists there. The brands come for three days. Many of the companies that make those brands work are there every day of the year.”

Industry City’s value to these companies comes from features that most Manhattan buildings cannot offer: 200-pound floor loads, oversized freight elevators, three-phase power and gas, and access to 50 megawatts of power at up to 22.5% in energy cost savings. This combination lets companies produce, warehouse and automate inside a market that usually pushes that work out of the city.

“Beanstalk is not a booking for us. It’s a reflection of who already works here and a comment on Industry’s City’s versatility as a work space that doubles as an event space,” said Jeff Fein, senior vice president of Industry City. “The story for decades has been that you came to New York to sell things. But now the engine behind what people are selling—from ideation and design to production and distribution— is back, and it’s on this campus. Beanstalk celebrates this.”

For Beanstalk attendees, the campus is part of the experience, with more than 50 eateries, bars and breweries for conversations to flow without leaving the property.

Beanstalk 2026 takes place September 14-16 at Industry City in Brooklyn. After last year’s event, Shopify President Harley Finkelstein called Brooklyn the “Mecca for merchants, builders, entrepreneurs, and Shopify app partners.”

The campus continues to add retail, logistics and robotics tenants, with more than 700 businesses and 8,500 workers now on site.

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About Industry City

Industry City is a destination work hub for technology companies, creative brands and multi-disciplinary makers and fabricators in Brooklyn’s Sunset Park. The 35-acre campus is home to more than 700 businesses and draws 8,500 daily workers across AI, robotics, e-commerce, design, retail, food & beverage and more. Each year, Industry City attracts 3.3 million visitors to its packed entertainment and event roster, and array of dining and shopping experiences. With heavy floor loads, freight access, enterprise-grade connectivity and access to 50 megawatts of power (at up to 22.5% in energy cost savings), Industry City is built for companies that are building the future. Industry City is home to companies across industries, including Adafruit, the Brooklyn Nets, Cresilon, HelloFresh, Open Igloo, NYU Langone, Skanska, Square Design, and hundreds of others.

About Beanstalk

Beanstalk is an invite-only event uniting the founders, operators and investors behind the country’s leading consumer brands. Held annually at Industry City in Brooklyn, Beanstalk convenes more than 1,000 senior executives across nine retail categories for three days of curated meetings, boardrooms and dinners.

Kieran Powell
Industry City
kieran.powell@channelvmedia.com

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