While Window Treatments are a specialty of mine, I also stay on top of what’s new in home furnishings. I do have access to a wide range of home furnishings with direct relationship with more than 125 leading home furnishings manufacturers and suppliers.
One of the ways our company strengthens our supplier relationships is our annual visit to the October High Point NC International Home Furnishings Market. We usually have some 100 of my Decorating Den Interiors colleagues visiting with many of our sources for high quality and distinctive home furnishings.
What this means to you is that we are not some lesser-known designer who occasionally deals with these sources. We are part of a collective of some 250 interior design businesses from throughout North America. We represent a major source of revenue for our suppliers. We tour the Market on a schedule visits in groups of about 25. When we enter one of the High Point Showrooms, we make an impact. The special attention we receive benefits our clients. We get lots of detail about what makes the products we bring to clients special.
Staying Fresh
The High Point Market is the largest home furnishings industry trade show in the world, with over 11 million square feet and about 2000 exhibitors throughout about 180 buildings. It is daunting for small independent designers. You can benefit from that major advantage we have.
Our Director of Design and Head of Merchandising, Sr. Vice President David Haseley, and his team, work directly with senior executives of our supplier firms, often the CEO, to ensure that our time at the Market is most effective. We are very efficiently shown the newest products in home furnishings, the newest in textiles, the newest in construction, the newest in styles, the newest in sustainability, the newest in color trends, and anything else that’s new in interior decor.
We also visit manufacturing plants to see first-hand the craftsmanship, attention to detail, and overall quality that is a feature of the products we offer to clients. And we get to meet employees so they can know we are a major customer.
Even those of us who can’t attend Market still get the benefit. We share regularly with each other about what we saw at Market.
NEED A MEETING PROGRAM? I have a presentation with slides that I can present to your group that goes over highlights from Fall Market. Just give me a call.
Leadership
Our clients even help us strengthen our supplier relationships by enabling us to serve as a resource for our suppliers. Because we do such a wide range of design projects company-wide, we are often asked to participate in educational panel discussions at home furnishings showrooms at High Point.
This year, for example, Universal Furniture used colleagues (l-r) Jennifer Ward-Woods and her sister Barbara Elliott, of Stone Mountain, Ga., along with Laura Outland and Lynne Lawson, of Columbia, Md. to discuss “Designing for Different Generations.” Gabby Luxury Furniture leaned on Krista Shugars (with microphone), of the Baltimore area, to be a panelist discussing “Luxury is an Attitude: Building Insane Revenue with Everyday Clients.”
All five of these colleagues have achieved Designer of the Year status as judged by interior design journalists evaluating room makeovers in our annual International Dream Room competition.
We also get to meet internationally known designers like Thom Felicia, Candace Olson, Jaclyn Smith, Hilary Farr, and Libby Langdon and pick up ideas from them.
It’s all about giving you an edge in considering options for a new room design. If you’d like to discuss some of your ideas or challenges, or would like to discuss a meeting program, give me a call.
