by Why showing up at market matters to your business
As the world’s largest biannual home furnishings trade event, High Point Market has long been a premier destination for discovering new products and building vital business connections.
Taking place later this month, High Point Market is where the players in our industry will meet face-to-face to shape the near future of their businesses. Dealers, designers and vendors alike will arrive ready to uncover insights needed for navigating today’s pressing challenges.
How will we manage volatile costs and pricing? Respond to shifting consumer conditions? Rethink sourcing and protect margins on both sides of the commerce equation?
I’m confident the answers will emerge — in showroom visits, across appointment tables, on shuttle rides with colleagues or in conversations from the day that continue into market’s evening events.
I recently spoke with a proactive retailer based in the Midwest who will attend High Point Market later this month. In light of recent and pending tariffs, they’re eager to sit down with key vendors to review program changes. Anticipating new, economically driven customer needs in the year ahead, they additionally plan to explore new resources at market for supplying strategic updates to their current product mix.
A Virginia-based dealer with four store locations told me they’ll be at market to evaluate up-to-the-minute pricing, while researching how shifts in manufacturing locations could ultimately impact their retail offering.
During an event in High Point last week, one furniture manufacturing executive remarked that a buyer appointment set at market is the gateway to achieving common ground, because they believe the company’s support for its retail partners is good for business — period. “These days, the relationships are more important than ever,” he said.
As the saying goes, we’re stronger together.
Throughout its 116-year existence — spanning World Wars I and II, the Great Depression and two global pandemics — High Point Market has served as a fundamental nexus for our industry’s buyers and sellers. In the present climate of economic uncertainty and rapid change, it remains the place where, collectively, we determine what comes next.
Our history reminds us that we depend on each other to move ahead — and that showing up is the first step in our progress.
I look forward to seeing you in High Point, Oct. 25-29.
Tammy Covington is president and chief executive officer of the High Point Market Authority.
