by Sarah Perpich

NEW YORK— As its name suggests, Shop Gotham is trying to cash in on one of tourists’ favorite pastimes in Manhattan.

The six-year-old shopping- tour company expects this year’s sales to climb 20 percent, according to president and owner Marla Hander. Shopping has become an essential part of the modern travel experience and companies such as hers are carving out a retail niche to cash in on the multibillion-dollar international tourism market.

Well established in Europe and Asia, shopping tours are now poised to become big business in New York, where shopping is the second-most-popular tourist activity in the city, according to NYC & Co., the tourism marketing organization for the City of New York.

Some 44 million international and domestic visitors came to New York in 2006, reports NYC & Co. Tourist spending in New York is climbing to new heights, up to $22.8 billion in 2005 (the most recent data available), compared to $14.7 billion in 1998.

That’s good news for Hander. Shop Gotham (shopgotham.com) was founded in 2001 by Rebecca Merritt and Joanna Knapp, who sold the company to Hander in June 2006. At the time of the purchase, the company was earning $200,000 annually — Hander said she has managed to increase earnings by 30 percent in just one year. She said she expects to see another 20 percent increase by the end of 2007 if the euro remains strong against the dollar. As of Monday, the euro was trading at about $1.38 per dollar.

“I’m a New Yorker and I’ve always been a good shopper,” said Hander, a self-professed bargain-hunter. “I wanted to meld that with tourism because I know that most women tourists come to New York to shop. People might not even think to look for a shopping tour. But when they come across it, they want to do it.”

She is now focusing her efforts on marketing to foreign countries, with a specific concentration on Asia and South America. Shop Gotham pitches shopping as an experience beyond what any guidebook can describe.

“Most people come to New York and are petrified of navigating their way around themselves, especially [when it comes to] shopping, because they think they will miss out on hidden gems and run out of time,” said Hander.

Shop Gotham invites every tourist to step into the role of native Manhattanite for a few hours. Whether she’s a fashionable frequent flyer or a clueless coach customer, each client gets her own window into New York’s shopping secrets.

Hander said it’s not unusual for tourists to find themselves at major department stores out of pure panic, lack of guidance or — the traveler’s biggest dilemma — lack of time. Shopping tours aim to ease that pressure by providing consumer education, special discounts, and a foot in the door of trendy and quintessential New York boutiques. Participants get access to showrooms and sample sales, where they can score discounts.

Currently, Shop Gotham’s customers can choose from shopping tours for women’s apparel and accessories in SoHo, NoLIta, the Meatpacking District and the Garment Center. NoLIta stops, for example, include Bad Dolly, Girlcat and Calvin Tran. Tour lengths vary: SoHo and NoLIta run two hours with 12 stops, and the Garment Center tour runs for three hours with eight stops, giving visitors more time at each stop.

Shop Gotham tour guides are not personal shoppers. Instead, they provide information about fashion history, architecture and the latest celebrity gossip. “They are not there to dress you, they are there to introduce you to the extremely fascinating shopping possibilities in New York City,” Hander said.

Her hope for participants is that they leave a tour having found something they never would have discovered on their own. “Maybe they learned about a new designer or purchased something they never would have been attracted to before,” she said.

Ninety-nine percent of Shop Gotham’s client’s are tourists — 20 percent international and 80 percent domestic, Hander said. They are also almost always women. Shop Gotham offers public tours for up to 20 people for $63 per person, as well as customized private tours, running four to 10 times per month. Private tours are priced at $465 and are limited to four people for four hours.

Fortune 500 companies are also starting to build private shopping tours into their client relations and incentive programs. Shop Gotham’s most recent corporate tour entertained the spouses of top executives at a major law firm for the day. Fifty women were invited into Henri Bendel before it opened one morning, where they heard a fashion trend presentation and got to shop privately.