Hello, welcome to Episode 13 of Design Curious Podcast.
I hope you guys are doing great. I'm talking to you today about
High Point Market which I went to a couple weeks ago and I
would say it took me a little while to recover from it.
You know, just partly because I'm on West Coast and High Point
Market is on East Coast, but there was so much to see and do
as I'll get to in the episode you'll hear such an experience,
definitely worthwhile. But first, I wanted to remind
you that the holidays are coming up and I'm announcing this month
that we have some bonuses going on with my design mentor, the
mentorship program membership that I have that is a monthly
call with me as well as some guided learnings about what the
career of interior design is all about.
And so we have some bonuses this month and next month before the
end of the year that if you sign on, you can get 1/2 hour call
with me, just a one-on-one and ask me all of your questions as
opposed to the group call that we have every month in the
program. So if that's of interest to you,
you're going to want to get in there.
Also, another reason to get in there right now before the end
of the year is because we will be raising those rates starting
January 1st. And I think it's quite
affordable and reasonable right now.
And if you want to lock that in for the lifetime of your
membership, you can go ahead and do that.
So you can find all that information on our Ward
design.com and I'd love to see you in there.
You can also message me on Instagram if you have any
questions about that and we'll be posting all the information
about those bonuses on Instagram as well.
And today I'm going to talk about all the reasons why you
should go to market, what you do there, and just my tips and
tricks on going to market. So let's get into it.
You're now listening to design. Curious.
A place where you, Creative One, are here to learn about what it
really is like to be an interior designer, and I'm your host and
mentor, Rebecca Ward. If you're worried about how to
succeed in a creative career, if you're ready to learn your next
steps to become an interior designer, and if you want the
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today's episode. So today I wanted to talk to you
a little bit about the the furniture markets that you will
likely be going to as an interior designer, whether
you're going for your firm or as a solopreneur or even as a
student. I highly recommend that you go
to these markets, one that's close to you.
I just got back from the fall market, High Point NC, and if
you are unfamiliar with what High Point is as far as the
market, it is the largest furniture market in the United
States and it has quite a draw internationally as well.
Twice a year, the sleepy town of High Point, NC becomes a
bustling center point for the furniture industry.
Thousands and 10s of thousands of people fly in from all over
to attend this furniture market. And why would you want to go to
this market? Well, there are many reasons.
The the main reason to go to market would be to see the
furniture that you are selecting for your clients.
Oftentimes we are proposing furniture to our clients that
they have not sat on themselves is not something that they can
find in retail showrooms. Often the wholesale accounts
that we maintain and open and nurture these relationships with
the vendors. These accounts are sometimes to
the trade only and as a designer you're looking for furniture
that is very high quality that will last a long time and is not
the same caliber as some of the retail items that people can
purchase. Now there are furniture stores,
retailers that will go and source from these brands and I
was told the percentage currently is about 60% of
attendees are designers and 40% are retailers.
So there will be furniture stores that have an umbrella of
different vendors that they offer to the clients that come
in. I would say that is different
than the brands that of furniture stores you might go
into as a consumer such as the Willing, Sonoma Group,
crate&barrel, things like that. They will sometimes source from
these vendors and they also have their own direct vendors as
well. But as a designer, typically
you're not going to want to source retail because you want
to be able to get some profit. It should be a part of your
business model to make money off the furniture that you're
selling to your clients. And so circling back to what I
said earlier is that you're proposing furniture to your
clients that they haven't been able to sit on.
So it's important that you can go and sit on these sofas
chairs, see the finish on the tables and then be able to
install confidence in your client that you've seen these,
you've sat in them, you've tried them, they look wonderful.
They're going to last and your client will be happy.
I often will tell the client and use this as a gauge that I would
never put anything into my client's home that I would not
want in my own home. And that's the kind of quality I
expect and that can be seen an apparent in the showrooms that
you go and visit. So one of the reasons I went to
High Point as opposed to Las Vegas, which is on the West
Coast so much closer to me. I've gone to the Vegas market
many, many times but there aren't as many vendors shown
there as there are at high point.
And so some of the vendors that I use for my clients, I really
wanted to go and see in person. And so large majority of them
are at the high point market. So it was nice to see those as
well as find some new vendors that I could work with that had
specific items I was looking for for my current projects and just
offer me some more inspiration and some more resources to offer
to my clients. Another aspect of market is that
there are often continue education classes going on
simultaneously. So that's another draw for some
design professionals because if you are certified or have taken
the NCIDQ, you have to maintain at least in most cases 10
credits of continuing education units over 2 years.
So the markets are a great opportunity to get a lot of that
out of the way and satisfy those units.
Then let's talk about the parties.
So as you're walking around showroom to showroom, there'll
often be a lot of free food. So lunches.
Typically you can find a showroom that's serving a full
lunch. They'll often have open bars as
well, offering cocktails, wine, beer and other things depending
on the showroom. So oftentimes we're swapping
notes with other desires, see where the best lunch is for that
day, or if you're needing a drink at the end of the day
because you've been walking. Well, I tracked it on my Fitbit.
I think we walked 16 and 17,000 steps each day, and that's
probably even not as many as could have been done.
So there are a lot of pictures of us sitting in chairs, partly
because we're trying it out, but partly because we're just so
tired from walking all day. And sometimes at the end of the
day, a little bit of alcohol will help those sad and tired
feet. And then I did notice on Sunday
they had some programs for students to come.
And so Joe Williams was sponsoring talk just dedicated
towards students. So they are starting to become a
lot more student friendly, which I think is great.
As I talked about in the internship episode that I
definitely think you should try to go to a market as a student
or as a part of your internship. The first time I'd gone to
market was one of the first years after I started my
business. So I took my mom with me and we
walked through all three buildings, 27 floors.
Well, not every single floor, because some of them are like
mattress companies and larger furniture vendors that don't
sell to designers. So we skipped those.
But there was a lot to say. It was quite overwhelming and to
be honest, I'd go into certain places not sure whether or not
they were designer friendly because at that time it was more
of a sixty, 4040% of the attendees were designers and
sixty were retailers. And so they were just starting
to become friendly to designers because of the recession, and
that they needed to kind of open their market to designers and
start being designer friendly. A lot of the places though,
still had minimums that were hard for a designer to meet,
like a $10,000 opening order, which almost never happens for a
designer like with one project. So it was quite overwhelming and
I was unsure about which showrooms I could go into which
would be beneficial to me, but it was a good starting place.
Once I did walk into the showroom and they scan your
badge and they find your Rep and then they'll let you know if you
know if they they sell to designers and what is available
to you, what their opening orders, they usually kind of get
that out of the way just to make sure you're not wasting your
time looking at their product if it's not available to you.
So it took me about 15 years to get over to a high point market,
but I'm glad that we went and I could see us going every couple
of years. I honestly don't go to market
every six months. So Las Vegas does their markets
in winter and summer and High Point does theirs in spring and
fall. Definitely wouldn't need to go
to all of those, maybe just one of those per year.
Things don't actually change that often.
So I don't really feel like it's necessary for me to go more than
that. It can add up because you're
paying for flights and hotels and food and all of that.
So I find about once a year going to market.
Now it did go to the Dallas market as well in January for
the first time because that had a particular vendor that doesn't
show at Las Vegas and I wanted to see a few of those products.
Dallas is also known for their lighting shows that they have a
huge lighting show. So all the vendors are there.
In general though, the Dallas market is smaller than Las
Vegas, so I probably won't really need to go to that one
again unless there's some lighting that I'm looking for.
In preparation for high point market, I talked to several of
my colleagues who have gone before and I found what was most
helpful for me was actually borrowing off of their
spreadsheets that they had made from previous markets of the
places that they went to and where they were located.
And I kind of was able to go through their vendor list and
see which ones I wanted to go to.
If there was a new one that I hadn't seen before, then I can
mark that. And I spread it out over 3 days
and kind of looked at the map and looked at the where the
showrooms are located and tried to group it all in one area
because high point market is spread out over many blocks of
showrooms and it's not all in one place like Las Vegas.
So it was prudent of us to try and schedule each day so that we
are seeing things in proximity to each other.
There is a great resource out there for those of you have
don't have an access to maybe another designer spreadsheet and
I did take a look at it. It is called the Cool Girls
Guide to High Point Market And in there it kind of has the must
see showrooms as well as some of the social events that are
happening because there are a lot of hosted parties for
different design celebrities who might be there speaking or
showing their product product line that they've created that
year. And so you can make sure and
check out the people that you are really interested in going
to see as well as the guide to the showrooms that you should
probably start out looking at. And it's great resource I think
for your first time at market. So that's market in a nutshell.
I mean, each person's experience of market is probably different,
but these have been my experiences and I do really like
going to market. There's a particular smell
you'll notice of all the new furniture is probably just the
off gassing. But I kind of like it when I go
into like the carpet showrooms, I'm like oh, it smells like new
furniture. And it just like since I've done
it so many times over the years, it just gives me a little bit of
happy feelings whenever I I get around it again.
So it's a great time to go with other designers as well.
So if you get a group of you to kind of go and coordinate and
it's nice to have dinners together afterward, which is
something that I usually try to do meet up with other designers.
And then that's a great time to as talk about business practices
and kind of encourage each other maybe in and get some great
ideas from each other on where to go.
So I hope that you are encouraged to go to market and
that you can find one in your area that would be easy for you
to get to. And I think the next market on
my bucket list is probably Maison Obje in Paris, France.
So hopefully one of these years I'll make it over there.
I'm not sure exactly how beneficial Maison Obje is for my
practice. So I need to look into it a
little bit. I've a feeling that there's a
lot of antiques at that market and maybe some more traditional
looking vendors, but we'll see. So maybe I'll see you in Paris.
So now you know what market is all about.
I hope that you do find yourself at 1:00 and if you are planning
to go to one, you can always give me a heads up and I would
be happy to kind of give you some pointers and maybe a list
of my favorite showrooms to head up.
And as always you can find everything in our show notes for
the podcast on our website ourworddesign.com/podcast and
you can e-mail me with any questions you have.
Podcast at our Word design.com. So that's it from me this week
Creative one. I hope you stick around for
another great episode next week to help you learn if interior
design is the career for you and until then stay creative.
Thanks for listening. If you love this episode, please
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curious creatives like you. If you have a topic request or
would like to contact me, simply head over to my website
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