Sales rep Neil Anderson ready for his 162nd HP market

HIGH POINT — Over lunch at Bistro 1605 in High Point the other day, Neil Anderson made an audacious claim: No one in the industry now has attended more High Point Markets then he has. And he’s staking that claim on a very big number: 161 High Point Markets … and counting.

“I’ve never found anybody close to my number,” he said, taking a sip of his tomato bisque soup.

Anderson, an independent sales representative for Furniture of America, will be in that company’s showroom this market in the International Home Furnishings Center, C700. This will be his 162^nd High Point Market.

“I look forward to the markets,” he said. “I can’t wait to see my friends and to see the new products I’ll be selling.”

The International Home Furnishings Representatives Association honored Anderson in 2009 with its Dean of IHFRA Award. He says that was an affirmation of the sales professionalism that he brings to his work.

Anderson, who lives in High Point, declines to give his age. He doesn’t want anyone to think he’s lost a step over his long career, and he says he still loves what he does at market. “I like the hoopla — the excitement of market,” he said.

Anderson attended his first High Point Market in January 1962, when a young John Fitzgerald Kennedy was president, and he’s been in High Point every year since then, a streak of 64 straight years. In that time, he’s missed just six markets.

At the start of his career, he worked for hardware supplier Winzeler, and he’s represented several furniture and upholstery makers over the years, including LADD Furniture, Magnussen and Jackson. For decades, he sold youth furniture for LADD’s Lea Industries division.

He admits his High Point numbers got a significant boost from the fact that High Point used to host four furniture markets a year instead of the current two. That helped him pack 74 markets into the 20 years from 1962 to 1981. High Point ended its four-market cycle in the early 1980s, sticking with the April and October dates that it still features.

ChatGPT is silent on the possibility that Anderson might be the current record holder for High Point market attendance. “There’s no documented ‘record holder’ for attending the most High Point Market shows — and that’s a bit surprising given the event’s long history (dating back to 1909),” ChatGPT says.

Anderson has had a front-row seat for much of that history, and he notes that the market has grown considerably over the years.

“Certainly there is more traffic, with more international attendance, particularly from Asia, where many case goods are now made,” he said. “And there is better entertainment at market.”

Another change: “There are no longer banks of phone booths in the lobby of the IHFC.”

He’s seen High Point successfully fight off challenges from Dallas and from Las Vegas over the years, and he’s also seen the furniture manufacturing landscape in the Southeast, which spawned the growth of the High Point Market, change dramatically.

“The market was born here because the majority of the furniture manufacturers were within 100 miles of High Point,” he noted. “In the last thirty years of the 20th century, we could never imagine that the big case goods manufacturers’ plants would be shut down and that some of them would be out of business in the next century.”

But what hasn’t changed, in his view, is the central role that High Point continues to play in the home furnishings industry.

“As to the necessity of the High Point markets, I believe buyers will continue to come, because there is no substitute for the aesthetic review of a new design,” he said. “Buyers can see the colors and the depth of the finishes. Upholstery fabrics have a feel and a warmth and there is no substitute for seeing the colors with one’s own eyes.”

That’s music to the ears of Tammy Covington, the president and CEO of the High Point Market Authority, who offers a heartfelt salute to Anderson’s long High Point history.

“When you think about what 161 markets represents — six decades of showing up, of believing in this industry, of being part of something bigger than any one product, trend, or era — it’s honestly hard to find the words,” Covington said. “Neil Anderson has been walking these showrooms since 1962, and as he prepares for his 162nd market, I think I speak for everyone at High Point Market Authority when I say: we are in awe.”