3.21.07

Ah yes, the temperature slowly, grudgingly starts to rise, snow melting, the return of birds that beat a hasty retreat to warmer climates 6 month ago.  Heavy heat generating clothes week by week slowly give way to a lighter fashion.  A general sense of bonhomie wafting in the air.  Now if this were a blog that had audio, the pleasant chirping of birds, playful laughter of young love in the background as you read along, all of that would be interrupted by the classic ripping of the needle across the record.  Why you ask?  It's time for the spring High Point Furniture Show. 

Look, I don’t mean to bring anyone down, but this show is the albatross of the furniture business.  Almost all the wholesalers and  retailers of the world at one point or another make their way to the High Point furniture show.  The first time they go, it's with a sense of excitement, a chance to make your way through the largest furniture show in the world.  If you are a wholesaler, it’s a chance to take your business to the next level, a shot at thousands and thousands of possible clients and contacts.  And oh how quickly the bloom leaves the rose.  By the time you are done, buyer and seller alike, you swear never to go back.  Quality Inn rooms go for $200 plus a night that are 20 miles away from the show, tin cans that pass for cars rent for $150 a day, never mind anything that doesn’t require you to make your way around town a-la the Flintstones. For the vendors, it’s the longest show of the year.  Absurd hours from 8am to 7pm, 8 days long.  Any other market starts at what seems like a much more civilized hour of 9am and finishes up at 6pm, is 5 to 6 days long.  For the buyers it’s at times incredibly frustrating because the show is so large and so unstructured that it’s impossible to see everything.  Everyone that goes, buyer and seller alike, eventually can’t stand being there.

Listen, its not that there is anything wrong with the place itself.  High Point, and North Carolina in general, is absolutely gorgeous this time of year.  Everything is in bloom, trees budding, mountains in the background, Southern hospitality.  It’s all very nice.  But man, the show is a drag

You know, I can sum up the whole thing with two little anecdotes: 

Anecdote #1 -   I have a good friend, who has shown there for the last decade and has always done well, stop doing the High Point market.  His wish to me for this market was “on the one hand I hope you do really well, on the other, I hope it goes terribly so you can pull out and never have to go back there.”  I knew exactly what he was saying.  Anyone that shows there knows exactly what he is saying. 

Anecdote #2 - My wedding anniversary is on the 19th of October.  Always right in the middle of the fall High Point show.  Flights down to High Point aren’t all that expensive from Minneapolis.  My wife and I really like to celebrate things.  I have a free place for her to stay. It’s a beautiful time of year to be there.  All of these things coming together to make for a nice short romantic trip.  She came down one time for our anniversary – the first time I did the fall show, over seven years ago.  She was there three days and two nights.  Haven’t seen her there since.  I doubt it has ever even crossed her mind to come down again for our anniversary.  I don’t blame her in the least.

Now that’s a lot of negativity about something that takes up 3 weeks a year of your life.  But I have to admit, there is a part of me that likes the show.  Maybe it’s the solidarity among the vendors, there is even a sort of solidarity between buyers and vendors – a need to get through this together.  But most importantly, it’s a really good show for me.  I have a decent sized booth so I can bring in a ton of things, it’s in a great location in a good building.  In a show that is un-navigable, this is a nice three floor building with small to medium sized booths, with a high percentage of great vendors doing interesting things that often get picked up later on by the bigger fish vendors.  Its one of two buildings that my type of client feels they have to “walk” and see what’s new.  Add to that, I stay in a house with some good friends, so I get to go “home” every evening.  If you get to know the area well enough (and after 7 years of doing this show, I do), there are some quite nice little restaurants, especially a great little Vietnamese place that no one knows about except for the entire Vietnamese community.  If all else fails there are also some good grocery stores, and there is nothing like having a nice grill out on a warm spring evening with the smell of fresh flowering trees in the air, maybe a beer or a nice cool glass of wine.

So its not all bad.   Now this spring’s show I seem to have the usual number of shipments arriving from the four corners – or at least three of them.  One shipment coming in from Thailand of great new things, a small airfreight shipment coming in from this little remote mountain village near the border of Laos and China, stuff from home here in Minneapolis, and things from my booth from this January’s New York show.  It even sounds like everything is going to make it in time. We shall see.  And you will be a party to it all if you insist on continuing to read these blog entries.