NRF Big Show 2026: The Retail and CPG Corporate Travel Playbook for NYC

The Javits Center expansion finishes its fifth full year of operation this month, and for one week in January it will absorb the largest single concentration of retail and consumer packaged goods decision-makers in the world. NRF’s Big Show 2026 runs January 11-13, with pre-conference workshops opening January 10 and partner programming extending through January 14, and the show floor will host approximately 35,000 to 40,000 attendees from roughly 100 countries. For corporate travel managers running retail and CPG programs, the week is a planning exercise that begins eight to ten months in advance and ends, if executed well, with senior executives moving cleanly between Javits, their Midtown or Hudson Yards hotel, and the airport sequence that gets them home Tuesday night or Wednesday morning.

What follows is the operating playbook for that week, built around the four structural realities that make NRF unique among the major conventions held in New York: a counterintuitive hotel pricing pattern, a convention center that is geographically isolated from the city’s main hotel inventory, regional HQ travel patterns that concentrate volumes through specific carriers and airports, and a CPG supplier ecosystem that adds roughly another 8,000 to 12,000 travelers to the headline NRF attendee count.

The Javits week in context

NRF holds its show in the middle of what would otherwise be Manhattan’s softest hotel week of the calendar year. The first full week of January, immediately after the New Year’s Eve compression and before the financial earnings cycle ramps up, typically posts the lowest weekly occupancy of any non-pandemic week in the city’s data series. Citywide occupancy in mid-January, absent NRF, runs in the high 60s to low 70s. Average daily rates settle near the year’s low point. Hotels program the week with the assumption that they will be quiet.

NRF disrupts that assumption. The show pulls 35,000 to 40,000 attendees, the CPG supplier and analyst orbits add another 8,000 to 12,000 travelers who do not appear on the official attendee count but consume hotel rooms and ground transport in the same window, and the major retailers’ delegations alone account for several thousand room nights spread across roughly twenty-five primary properties. The result is a pricing curve that splits sharply by geography. West Side hotels within walking distance of Javits see rates double or triple their non-NRF January baseline. Hotels east of Sixth Avenue, particularly in Midtown East and the Murray Hill corridor, hold rates closer to the citywide average. Downtown properties in the Financial District and Tribeca often remain below their post-holiday January rack.

For travel managers, the pricing geography is the first variable to plan against. A delegation that books exclusively in the Hudson Yards and West 30s zone will pay materially more than a delegation that accepts a fifteen-minute taxi or chauffeur transfer from Midtown East. The decision between the two has less to do with cost optimization than with how senior the traveler is, what their meeting cadence looks like, and whether their schedule includes the keynote programming that makes a Javits-walkable hotel functionally non-negotiable.

The hotel tiering that actually works

The hotel tiering for a properly run NRF program splits into three buckets.

The first tier covers Javits-walkable inventory, which means properties within roughly ten minutes’ walk of the Manhattan Plaza entrance. The Manhattan West and Hudson Yards developments anchor the high end of this tier with the Equinox Hotel, the Pendry Manhattan West, and the various Pendry-adjacent options. The Westin New York at Times Square and the Marriott Marquis sit slightly east but remain functionally walkable in dry weather, and the Yotel on 10th Avenue offers a price point that retailers’ middle-management cohorts can actually book without expense report friction. This is the tier that travel managers reserve for senior executives presenting on the main stage, for sales leaders running anchor meetings at their company booths, and for any traveler whose schedule includes a 7:30 AM Javits arrival on either show day.

The second tier covers Times Square and the Theater District, which is where the bulk of NRF volume actually lands. The Marriott Marquis, the Sheraton New York Times Square, the New York Hilton Midtown, the Westin Times Square, and the cluster of newer properties along Eighth Avenue between 42nd and 50th absorb the majority of attendee bookings. These properties are a ten-to-fifteen-minute taxi or chauffeur ride from Javits in normal traffic, with the caveat that NRF morning traffic between Eighth Avenue and 11th Avenue can stretch that to twenty-five minutes on the days when keynote schedules pull simultaneous waves of arrivals.

The third tier covers Midtown East, the Murray Hill corridor, and the Financial District. Rates in this tier hold closer to the citywide January average, the properties are typically larger and easier for delegations of fifteen-plus travelers to block, and the transit to Javits is the cost of the savings. Travel managers running retail programs with budget-sensitive cohorts and CPG programs whose primary meeting clusters are off-site rather than on the show floor often default to this tier and accept the ground transport overhead.

Why the supplier ecosystem matters

NRF’s official attendee count understates the actual volume in Manhattan during show week. The CPG suppliers who do not register for the show but who travel to New York for the dozens of off-site dinners, hospitality suites, and one-on-one meetings that fill the calendar add somewhere between 8,000 and 12,000 travelers to the citywide demand picture. The analyst and consulting orbit adds another several thousand. The financial services and banking executives covering the retail and consumer sector add another wave.

This shadow attendance shows up in hotel inventory pressure across the city, not just on the West Side. It also shows up in restaurant availability, which is the secondary planning variable that catches first-time NRF travel managers off guard. The dinner reservations that retail executives need to confirm with their key suppliers should be locked in by late October at the latest. By December, the operable inventory of private dining rooms in Midtown, Hudson Yards, and the West Village is functionally sold out.

Javits Center logistics

The Jacob K. Javits Convention Center stretches roughly six blocks along 11th Avenue from 34th to 40th Streets and runs west to 12th Avenue, with the 2021 expansion adding an additional 1.2 million square feet of exhibit space, meeting rooms, and the rooftop pavilion that has become the venue’s signature event space. For NRF, the show floor occupies essentially the entire campus, with the main expo halls on the river side and the keynote, breakout, and meeting room programming distributed across the Crystal Palace, the River Pavilion, and the expansion building.

The geographical isolation of Javits is the central logistics challenge of the week. The convention center is not subway-accessible in the way that the major Midtown hotels are. The 7 train extension to Hudson Yards opened in 2015 and helped considerably for travelers whose hotel sits along the 7 line, but the walk from the 34th Street-Hudson Yards station to the Javits Manhattan Plaza is still roughly seven to ten minutes depending on which entrance the traveler is targeting. The 8th Avenue subway lines (A, C, E) deposit travelers at 34th Street-Penn Station, which is a fifteen-minute walk west to Javits in good weather and longer in January conditions.

The practical consequence is that most NRF attendees move between hotel and Javits by taxi, ride-hail, chauffeur service, or shuttle. The shuttle option is the official NRF-coordinated bus program that runs from a designated set of partner hotels, and it is reliable but inflexible. For executives whose schedules include off-site meetings or whose hotels are not on the shuttle route, the ride-hail and chauffeur options become the default.

The three Javits entrances and which one to use

Javits has three main approaches that matter for ground transportation drop-offs.

The Manhattan Plaza entrance is the ceremonial main entrance on 11th Avenue, with the large open plaza that the venue’s exterior shots typically feature. This is the entrance that the NRF marketing materials direct attendees to, and it is the entrance that the NRF-coordinated shuttles use. It is also the most congested approach during morning peak hours, particularly between 8:30 and 9:30 AM when keynote arrivals create a sustained wave of vehicle traffic into the 11th Avenue south-bound lanes.

The North entrance serves the 2021 expansion building and is the cleanest approach for travelers headed to programming in the expansion space, including most of the rooftop pavilion and northern meeting room programming. The North entrance is reached via 40th Street or 39th Street off 11th Avenue, and the vehicle staging is materially less congested than the Manhattan Plaza approach.

The 39th Street side entrance is the operationally fastest entrance for travelers who know the building and who are heading to the Crystal Palace, the central meeting rooms, or the south-side exhibit halls. Travel managers who run NRF programs at scale often default to instructing chauffeurs to drop at 39th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues and have travelers walk the half-block in. The time savings against the Manhattan Plaza queue is typically eight to fifteen minutes during the morning compression.

The 11th Avenue truck dock and exhibitor logistics

The truck dock approaches on 12th Avenue and along the river-facing side of the building handle the exhibitor freight that builds and breaks down the show floor. For travel managers, the truck dock is not a passenger drop-off zone, but it matters for sponsor and exhibitor staff who arrive during the build-out window in the days before the show opens. Companies running large booth presences at NRF, particularly the technology vendors and the major retail platform companies, send build-out crews who arrive between January 5 and January 9 and stay through the show. These crews typically book separately from the executive delegation and operate on different ground transportation patterns.

The walking minutes that decide hotel selection

For the senior cohort whose schedule includes both Javits programming and off-Javits meetings, the walking minutes between hotel and venue become the variable that decides whether a property works or does not work. The Hudson Yards properties, including the Equinox Hotel and the Pendry Manhattan West, sit roughly six to eight minutes’ walk from the Manhattan Plaza entrance in clear conditions, with the High Line and Hudson Yards public spaces providing covered or sheltered walking paths for portions of the route. The Yotel on 10th Avenue at 42nd Street is approximately ten minutes’ walk to the Manhattan Plaza, depending on which 11th Avenue cross street is used.

East of 9th Avenue, the walking math stops working for most executives. The Westin Times Square and the Marriott Marquis are approximately fifteen to twenty minutes’ walk to Javits, which is more time than most senior executives are willing to budget against a tight meeting schedule. The default at that distance is to taxi or chauffeur, with the time premium running ten to twenty-five minutes depending on traffic.

The retail program patterns

Each of the major retailers that attends NRF in volume runs a distinctive corporate travel pattern that travel managers running supplier-side programs can plan against. Understanding these patterns is essential for any program manager whose company is presenting to, meeting with, or hosting executives from the major retailers during the show.

Walmart from Bentonville

Walmart’s corporate travel pattern for NRF moves the largest single corporate delegation through the show, typically running between 200 and 350 executives depending on which year’s strategic priorities the company is presenting. The Bentonville headquarters operates through Northwest Arkansas Regional Airport (XNA), which is a connecting airport for most carrier networks. Walmart’s executive cohort routes primarily through American Airlines via Dallas-Fort Worth or Chicago O’Hare to LaGuardia, with a secondary flow through Delta via Atlanta to LaGuardia or JFK.

The connecting bank pattern means Walmart executives arriving for the show’s Sunday and Monday programming will typically land at LGA between roughly 11 AM and 4 PM on Saturday and Sunday, which spreads the arrival load across the airport’s afternoon capacity. For Walmart’s most senior executives, including the C-suite cohort that participates in the keynote and analyst sessions, the company traditionally uses a combination of private aviation through Teterboro and commercial first-class on the American Dallas-to-LGA connection. Teterboro arrivals route via chauffeur service through the Lincoln Tunnel to either Hudson Yards or the Times Square hotel cluster.

Walmart’s hotel block historically splits between a primary block at one of the larger Times Square properties for the bulk of the delegation and senior-cohort blocks at higher-tier Manhattan West or Hudson Yards inventory. The company’s NRF presence is consistent enough that the major hotel sales teams begin engaging on the Walmart block in the spring of the preceding year.

Target from Minneapolis

Target’s NRF travel pattern is structurally simpler than Walmart’s because Minneapolis-Saint Paul (MSP) has direct service to all three New York airports on Delta, which dominates the MSP hub. The Target delegation, typically running between 150 and 250 executives, splits arrivals between LGA and JFK with a heavy preference for LGA on the morning and midday Delta departures from MSP.

The Delta hub-to-LGA route is efficient enough that Target’s middle-management cohort does not generally need to position to a hotel the night before NRF programming starts. Travelers can fly out of MSP on Sunday morning, arrive at LGA by early afternoon, and check into a Manhattan hotel with enough time to attend Sunday evening partner events. For the executive cohort, the company traditionally arrives Saturday with hotel staging that runs through Tuesday or Wednesday.

Target’s hotel block has historically anchored at the Marriott Marquis or the Westin Times Square for the main delegation, with senior cohort blocks at the higher-tier Hudson Yards or Manhattan West properties for the executives presenting on the main stage. The Bullseye creative team, which operates Target’s NRF booth presence and the brand experience programming, books separately from the corporate travel office and typically extends to the Wednesday departure.

Costco from Issaquah

Costco’s NRF presence is smaller than Walmart’s or Target’s, typically running between 75 and 150 executives, but the Seattle-based travel pattern follows a recognizable structure. The company’s Issaquah headquarters operates through Seattle-Tacoma International (SEA), which has direct service to JFK on Delta and Alaska Airlines and to EWR on United. Costco’s corporate travel program has historically favored Alaska Airlines as the home-hub carrier and routes the bulk of the NRF delegation through SEA-JFK on Alaska or Delta.

The five-and-a-half-hour transcontinental flight time means Costco’s executive cohort positions to New York on Saturday and stays through Tuesday or Wednesday. Hotel preferences have historically favored properties with strong loyalty programs and consistent operational quality, with Marriott and Hyatt properties accounting for the majority of the block. The Costco brand culture is more operationally focused and less media-facing than the larger retailers, and the company’s NRF presence reflects that. Costco executives generally attend the show, take meetings with suppliers, and do not seek the keynote stage time that Walmart and Target executives prioritize.

Kroger from Cincinnati

Kroger’s NRF delegation, typically running between 100 and 200 executives, operates through Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International (CVG) and routes primarily through Delta’s Atlanta hub to LGA or JFK, with secondary direct service from CVG to LGA on Delta. The CVG-LGA route is operationally tight enough that Kroger’s executive cohort can fly out of Cincinnati on Sunday morning and arrive at LGA by early afternoon, which gives the company flexibility on hotel staging.

Kroger’s hotel block has historically anchored in the Times Square cluster with secondary inventory at Hudson Yards properties for the senior cohort. The grocery industry’s NRF participation overlaps significantly with the Food Marketing Institute and the broader food retailing event calendar, and Kroger’s travel team typically coordinates NRF programming alongside the company’s January food industry travel commitments.

The smaller retailers and the long tail

The retailer attendance at NRF extends well beyond the four largest names. Best Buy, Home Depot, Lowe’s, Macy’s, Nordstrom, Albertsons, Publix, Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Ross, TJX, Ulta, Sephora, and the major specialty and department store chains all bring delegations that range from a dozen executives at the smaller specialty retailers to several hundred at the largest mass-market chains. Each of these programs operates on its own travel pattern, with corporate hub airports, preferred carriers, and hotel preferences that the company-specific travel managers can characterize in detail.

For the supplier-side travel manager whose company is engaging with multiple retailers during NRF, the practical implication is that the meeting scheduling exercise has to account for where each retailer’s executive cohort is staying. A vendor whose key meetings include Walmart and Target leadership may end up with a meeting cadence that runs from the Equinox Hotel in Hudson Yards to the Marriott Marquis to a restaurant in the Theater District to Javits and back to Hudson Yards over the course of a single afternoon. The ground transportation planning for that cadence is materially easier with pre-arranged chauffeur service than with ride-hail.

Airport arrival patterns

The three New York airports each play a distinctive role in the NRF arrival pattern, and the choice between JFK, EWR, and LGA depends on the traveler’s origin, carrier preference, and hotel destination.

LaGuardia for the regional HQ flows

LaGuardia (LGA) is the operational default for the regional HQ flows that dominate the NRF arrival pattern. Delta’s domestic hub at LGA serves the Minneapolis (Target), Atlanta-connecting (Kroger), and Cincinnati-direct (Kroger) flows. American’s LGA presence handles the Bentonville-via-DFW or Bentonville-via-ORD flow that moves the Walmart cohort. The post-rebuild LGA experience is materially better than the pre-2022 baseline, with the Delta and American concourses both offering reasonable food, lounges, and ground transportation logistics.

LGA’s geographic advantage is the proximity to Manhattan. The drive time from LGA to Hudson Yards in normal traffic is roughly twenty-five to forty minutes via the Triboro Bridge and the FDR, with the variability driven by time of day. For executives arriving on midday Saturday or Sunday flights, the LGA-to-Hudson Yards transfer is operationally clean. For executives arriving during the Saturday evening peak or in poor weather, the transfer can stretch to sixty minutes or longer.

LGA’s disadvantage for NRF arrivals is the limited international service. Travelers arriving from international origins typically route through JFK or EWR rather than LGA, even when the connecting itinerary technically supports LGA as the final terminus. For the international attendee cohort, which represents roughly a quarter of NRF attendance, JFK and EWR are the operational default.

JFK for the international cohort and the West Coast direct flights

JFK handles the international arrival flows and the West Coast direct services that bring Costco’s Seattle cohort and the various California-based executive flows into Manhattan. JFK’s operational complexity, including the multiple terminal layout and the variable AirTrain experience, makes the airport less efficient than LGA for travelers whose itinerary supports either airport, but JFK is operationally clean for the international and West Coast flows that have no LGA alternative.

JFK-to-Manhattan ground transportation patterns for NRF favor pre-arranged chauffeur service for executive cohorts and the AirTrain-to-Long Island Rail Road or AirTrain-to-subway route for the middle-management cohort. The flat-rate yellow taxi from JFK to Manhattan is a serviceable fallback, though the queue at JFK Terminal 4 during the Saturday and Sunday peak NRF arrival windows can run thirty minutes or longer.

EWR for the New Jersey hotel option and private aviation

Newark (EWR) handles the United-connecting flows from the West and South and the international flows that route through Star Alliance carriers. EWR’s distinctive role in the NRF arrival pattern is twofold. First, for travelers whose itinerary involves a New Jersey hotel rather than a Manhattan hotel, EWR is the operationally efficient airport. Second, for executives sourcing private aviation, Teterboro (TEB) is the primary New Jersey FBO destination, and the ground transfer from TEB to Hudson Yards runs roughly twenty to thirty minutes via the Lincoln Tunnel.

The New Jersey hotel option is worth flagging for travel managers running cost-sensitive programs. The Marriott and Hyatt properties in Jersey City, Hoboken, and the secondary Bergen County and Newark hotel inventory can run materially below Manhattan rates during NRF week, with the trade-off being the PATH train or Lincoln Tunnel transfer to Javits. For a delegation of fifteen to thirty travelers whose meeting cadence is primarily on the West Side, the New Jersey hotel option is operationally viable. For senior executives or for travelers whose meeting cadence sprawls across Manhattan, the New Jersey option introduces enough friction that it generally does not work.

Private aviation through Teterboro

Teterboro is the dominant private aviation FBO for NRF arrivals. The major retailers’ senior executive cohorts, the largest CPG suppliers’ C-suite presence, and the financial services and consulting executives whose firms own or charter aircraft routinely position through TEB rather than the commercial airports. The TEB-to-Manhattan ground transfer is operationally clean in normal traffic, with the Lincoln Tunnel routing to Hudson Yards or the West Side hotel cluster running twenty to thirty minutes.

The TEB capacity during NRF arrival windows is constrained. The major FBOs (Meridian, Atlantic, Signature) recommend slot reservations for arrivals during the Saturday afternoon and Sunday midday peak, and the parking inventory for aircraft staying through the show week fills up several weeks in advance. Travel managers running private aviation through TEB for NRF should be working with their flight departments on slot and parking reservations by November at the latest.

Ground transportation between hotel and Javits

The hotel-to-Javits ground transportation pattern is the operational variable that travel managers running NRF programs spend the most time managing during show week. The aggregate volume is large enough to overwhelm the ride-hail and taxi capacity during peak windows, and the geography is constrained enough that the routing options are limited.

The pre-arranged chauffeur option

For executive cohorts, the default is pre-arranged chauffeur or black car service with staged pickup at the hotel and pre-confirmed drop-off at Javits. The economics work because the executive’s time is materially more valuable than the chauffeur cost, and the predictability of pre-arranged service eliminates the variability that ride-hail introduces during peak windows. Travel managers running multi-executive programs typically work with corporate ground transportation providers who can stage vehicles in the West 30s and 40s for the morning and afternoon peak windows, with drivers either holding curbside positions or staging in nearby legal parking until summoned.

The chauffeur planning needs to account for the Manhattan Plaza congestion during the keynote arrival window. The practical solution is to drop at the 39th Street side entrance or at 36th or 37th Streets between 10th and 11th Avenues, with the executive walking the half-block in. For afternoon pickups, the staging recommendation is the 11th Avenue south curb at 36th or 37th Street, which can be reached without entering the Manhattan Plaza congestion zone.

The NRF shuttle option

The official NRF shuttle program runs from a designated set of partner hotels on a fixed schedule. The shuttles are reliable, free to NRF attendees, and operationally clean for travelers whose hotel is on the route. The drawback is the schedule inflexibility. A shuttle that departs at 8:00 AM and 8:15 AM does not work for an executive whose meeting cadence requires arrival at 7:30 AM or who needs to depart Javits mid-afternoon for an off-site meeting.

For the middle-management cohort and for travelers whose schedule maps cleanly to the shuttle windows, the NRF shuttle is the most cost-effective option. For executives, the shuttle is rarely the right choice.

Ride-hail during peak windows

Ride-hail (Uber, Lyft, and the various TLC apps) is the default fallback for travelers who do not have pre-arranged service and who are not on the shuttle route. The operational reality during NRF peak windows is that surge pricing is consistent, vehicle availability is constrained, and the pickup and drop-off congestion at Javits can extend wait times to fifteen minutes or longer.

Travel managers running cost-sensitive programs should plan for the surge pricing in their cost models. The aggregate ride-hail cost for a delegation of twenty travelers making four ride-hail trips per day across three days can run materially higher than the equivalent chauffeur block, particularly when surge multipliers run two-and-a-half to three times the base fare during the morning and afternoon peaks.

The walking option from Hudson Yards

For travelers based in Hudson Yards or Manhattan West, walking to Javits is the operationally fastest and most reliable option during clear weather. The walking route from the Equinox Hotel to the Manhattan Plaza entrance runs approximately six to eight minutes in dry conditions, and the route from the Pendry Manhattan West is comparable. The Yotel on 10th Avenue at 42nd Street is approximately ten minutes’ walk to the Manhattan Plaza.

In January conditions, the walking option needs to account for weather. A delegation that defaults to walking in clear conditions should have a backup chauffeur or ride-hail plan for rain, snow, or sub-freezing wind chill days. Travel managers running NRF programs in 2026 should specifically check the long-range January 11-13 forecast in early January and brief executives on the contingency plan.

What to plan in October, November, December

The NRF planning calendar runs backwards from the show dates with specific lock-in points that travel managers should treat as hard deadlines.

By October, the senior cohort hotel blocks should be confirmed. The Hudson Yards and Manhattan West inventory at the higher-tier properties is the first to sell out, and contracts signed in October typically include the most favorable rate floors and the most flexible attrition terms. October is also the right window to confirm dinner reservations at the private dining rooms that the senior cohort will use during the show week.

By November, the bulk delegation hotel blocks should be locked. The Times Square and Theater District inventory is operationally adequate through November bookings, with the caveat that the most desirable properties begin showing limited availability by mid-November. November is also the right window to begin firming up chauffeur and ground transportation contracts, particularly for programs that need staged vehicles at peak windows.

By December, the airline bookings should be confirmed and the final delegation rosters should be locked. December is the operational window for the detailed scheduling work, including the meeting cadence planning, the booth staffing schedules for exhibitor programs, and the off-site event coordination.

By the first week of January, the contingency plans should be in place. Weather contingencies for January 11-13 should be reviewed against the long-range forecast, ground transportation contracts should be confirmed with peak window staging, and the senior cohort’s executive assistants should have the detailed itineraries with all the entrance, pickup, and meeting room logistics documented.

What gets cut and what gets kept

The corporate travel cost pressure that has shaped the major retail and CPG programs over the past several years shows up in the NRF planning conversation. The cohort sizes have not materially shrunk, but the seniority of the cohorts has shifted. The retailers’ programs increasingly send fewer middle-management attendees and concentrate the show participation among the senior executives whose presence at the show generates business value. The CPG suppliers’ programs have similarly compressed, with the supplier presence increasingly focused on the executives running the key retailer relationships rather than the broader sales and marketing organization.

The hotel and ground transportation choices reflect that compression. The senior cohort hotel blocks at the higher-tier Hudson Yards properties have held their volume, but the middle-management hotel blocks at the Times Square and Theater District properties have tightened. The total citywide demand pattern is similar to historical NRFs, but the distribution within the city has shifted slightly toward the senior cohort properties.

For travel managers running the major retail and CPG programs, the practical implication is that the planning effort concentrates on the senior cohort and the executive logistics. The middle-management programs largely run themselves on the established patterns, with the travel office’s attention focused on the senior cohort scheduling, the hotel and ground transportation contracts at the higher-tier properties, and the contingency planning that protects the executive itineraries.

The NRF week is a planning exercise that rewards preparation. Programs that begin the conversation in March or April of the preceding year, lock in the senior cohort blocks by October, and run the detailed scheduling work through November and December reach show week with the executive logistics largely settled. Programs that begin in October or November find themselves negotiating against constrained inventory, paying premium rates, and managing the variability that the unprepared programs introduce.

The retail and CPG industry meets in New York for one week each January. The travel programs that get the week right have spent the preceding nine months preparing for it.