InsideFurniture

THE ECONOMY, SMARTY: As a vital partner and beneficiary, the State of North Carolina helps keep the High Point Market strong

Keeping the High Point Market strong is good business. Better yet, it’s a prudent investment returning jobs and prosperity to High Point, the Piedmont Triad, the State of North Carolina and, most importantly, to the global home furnishings industry.

Despite a disappointing economy, the Market remains strong in size, scope and influence.

The world class Market is a renewable economic resource, pumping more money — $1 billion-plus annually — into the area than any Super Bowl generates wherever it lands. Aside from Mardi Gras, the Market is one of the largest income-producing events of its kind in North America and the world.

Under the leadership of Brian Casey, president of the Market Authority, civic and business leaders are meeting and communicating with legislators in nearby Raleigh to extol the virtues of the Market, as a unique economic engine of ingenuity.

Always seeking to grow and become more important economically, as it is in breadth, design and style, the Market Authority seeks $1.6 million in additional marketing funds from the State. Total funding is about $3 million from state and local government.

The additional marketing funds will help the Market Authority grow the enviable enterprise's attendance and exhibitors, while still seizing all the opportunities and addressing vital challenges.

The Market seeks a prudent investment so it can return dividends in jobs, prosperity, stability and payback directly and indirectly, and that includes an amazing creative class generating more than $8 billion to the region.

Of the reverberating income the Market generates, a portion of it returns to state and local coffers as tax revenue. That means the Market pays back its investors more than it receives.

Even though the Market is behemoth, its success can anesthetize some of us to the sting of reality: A challenging economy, industry constriction and an aggressive, even brazen smaller Las Vegas Market on the prowl.

Even with the success of the Market, no segment of the industry, or citizenry, can be lulled into a false sense of security. That’s the reason merchants, designers, manufacturers and suppliers need to preserve their vital stake in keeping the High Point Market strong and flexible.

For more information, contact the High Point Market Authority. At the North Carolina Legislation, contact Henry M. Michaux, Jr., senior chairman, appropriations committee, North Carolina House of Representatives or Charles W. Albertson, co-chairman, appropriations-base budget commuttee, North Carolina State Senate.

CARPE CONSUMER: Retailer Kris McCreery is using the Internet to become a thought leader

BlogNote: In his own words, Kris McCreery of Sacramento's McCreery's Home Furnishings explains how he plans to use the Internet to attract and satisfy consumers actively searching for merchants to help them attain their dreams for comfortable living.

With rising costs of fossil fuels, people will be spending a lot more time centered around the home. That means those Sunday drives are likely to be less common — at least until cars get more fuel efficient because I can't see gas prices decreasing anytime soon.

Realizing this, I think that smart furniture retailers should be embracing newer technologies (which the furniture industry seems for the most part to be reluctant to do) and delivering information and content directly to the consumer.

I feel ever so certain that the internet is this tool – and that's why I have made a strong push to make my company —McCreery's Home Furnishings — a thought leader when it comes to providing valuable content to consumers.

Our website (www.mccreerys.com) provides a product catalog which includes more than 10,000 items of home furnishings so people can shop and browse in the comfort of their own home.

With approximately 60%-plus furniture purchases first researched online, I think it makes perfect sense.

The Internet is an incredible tool to provide not only product information but also experience and expertise to our potential clients.

Many times I feel that our clients want a more vibrant and comfortable home-lifestyle, yet they aren't quite sure how to achieve it.

This is why we have also launched a chatty blog for our designers to introduce themselves, as well as provide information about design, trends, and new collections.

So far it has been received with great enthusiasm.

Persistence and resourcefulness is key, but let us not be as persistent as a fly would be against a glass window!

The way people search and acquire news and information is changing. It only makes sense for the industry to change with it, don't ya think?

Sure do, Kris. Thanks.

PURPOSE AND BEING: Living comfortably is the sustaining marketing message for sustaining satisfaction

Look at the beautifully evocative image above. Isn’t it what our industry is all about? Damn right!

In the oil painting — White Roses from The Ashton Company — the essence of our industry’s purpose and being radiates so bright. Even so, this enduring message of comfort is missing in all the vapid sale-price-item cacophony that is home furnishings promotions today.

In case you missed it, nowhere in the image are discounts, no-no-no nonsense and other mercantile chicanery.

Here’s how I discovered the image: A friend and I talked about our industry’s purpose and being. With passion, I said all of us — merchants, manufacturers, suppliers and all connected to the home furnishings industry — are engaged in the sacred responsibility of furnishing people’s homes.

Hearing that, my friend sprang to his feet, took me the arm and joyfully commanded, “Come with me. I’ll show you what we’re all about, but most people don’t declare.”

I really didn’t expect such a demonstrable response, and I’m so glad he showed me the purpose-encompassing image appearing in this post.

As a supplier of sorts, my friend is detached professionally from consumers, but is closer to their hearts and minds than many merchants and vendors who seem to be too busy selling. They choose to ignore or are oblivious to recognize our industry’s primary responsibility of ministering comfort and joy from function, design and style.

In the past when I have written about responsibility, I am characterized as a naïve twit, dispensing warm and fuzzy information that doesn’t have much to do with selling furniture.

To which, I ask, ”If you’re not in this business to help people live comfortably, then get out.” People don’t want to be sold sticks and cloth or closed. They want to be opened with ways to dream and attain those dreams.

No matter how real marketing is, real men feel they need to sell for sales sake. To them, marketing is for wimps and twits who creatively craft strategies that actually establish a lasting context for sales to exist.

Back to this glorious image above. My friend is rare at his professional level, even if it is so distant from the merchant-designer level. His exquisite empathy constitutes an enduring virtue that guides his personal life and helps focus an honorable world view.

“Just look at this painting and you will see what we’re about,” he exclaimed, pointing vigorously at what he called “an embodiment” of our industry’s purpose and being. “She is comfortable, relaxed, safe and contented in an environment she loves.”

What’s more, he explained, “The brightness of life flows into the room that envelopes her and anyone else who goes there.” Look closely, and you’ll see two glasses on the cocktail table.

Each of us in our own way needs to translate and convey the enduring message of this marvelous image into our own lives and circumstances to satisfy people, the consumers who pay the bills.

The comfort of White Roses constitutes a powerful marketing message of the strength of simplicity, in a well-designed living environment that honorably transports people to comfort they deserve and always want.

If we’re not purveyors of living comfortably, then what are we doing in and industry whose purpose and being is all about comfortable living?

By any other name, White Roses, is a marketing message that still smells as sweet as satisfying people to live comfortably.

STAY TO PLAY: Deep pocketed and farsighted players are in position to reap rewards when the recession ends

Staying power is the name of the staying game. For manufacturers and retailers, the mercantile mantra is, “Better tread than dead.” Or, “Tread to stay ahead.”

It's all about staying focused. While the treading is tough, the smartest among us are finding ways to move forward with discipline to preserve dignity. Scrambling is better for eggs than business.

Treading the business waters to stay afloat continues to be a buoyant purpose in the minds of many. Sorry to say not all will make it.

Now is the time to capture the future while others are retrenching.

Smart merchants and manufacturers know they cannot succeed without marketing to drive sales, even in this trough of a frustrating business cycle.

Without a context for sales — informing, guiding and educating — no sales will be the context in the summer of discontent and will extend into the fall and winter, too.

Eliminating the marketing component is short sighted and a big opportunity cost.

Without a sufficient marketing context in place when good times return, the myopia that saw short-term savings, retrospectively, will have been a blind streak of dumb and not luck.

Here an element of hope: An unexpected benefit of the down economy is the reality that price promotions — no matter how gimmick-ridden, repugnant and odious — are not working. Hooray.

Adversity is the mother of invention. In times of trouble, the best resource is resourcefulness.

Here’s a open secret to exploit. More people are finding ways to remain at home, a new place they are discovering all the time.

Yes, consumers are staying put for many reasons wrought by rotten economy that will get better. In the meantime, families are getting together, along with neighbors.

My prediction is we will become more communally tribal, with more home centric people helping others.

This stay at home sense will preserve gasoline capital and, we hope, redirect the remaining discretionary income into investing into feathering the nest.

Home is what the industry makes of it for consumers.

GLOBAL MAGNETISM: Home furnishings’ creative class intensifies High Point region’s robust path to growth

Global home furnishings industry, start singing: A thrilling, portentous pep concert this week captivated the crowd from melodious and energized leaders of the High Point Market Authority, High Point Economic Development Corporation and Piedmont Triad Partnership.

At High Point’s Chamber of Commerce Economic Summit, the three talented tenors sang powerfully to the grand regional harmony of being in the right place at the right time. The star performers are Brian Casey, Market Authority; Loren Hill, High Point EDC; and Don Kirkman, Piedmont Triad Partnership.

Loren Hill, left, president, High Point Economic Development Corporation, discusses numerous reasons his agency achieves national recognition for attracting new business and job growth.

From the same page in the business growth hymnal, they sang inspiring romantic arias of area matters for success, as in:

The nationally recognized and respected 12-county Piedmont Triad, again in the Top 10 metropolitan areas for growth in the population category 200,000 to 1 million, according to rankings by Site Selection magazine. Chicago ranked first again as the top metropolitan market with populations exceeding 1 million.

Given the demonstrable facts, no wonder World Business Chicago and Piedmont Triad Partnership are the only North American economic development organizations ranked in the publication’s top 10 listed during the past three years.

High Point and the region’s renowned home furnishings cluster with its unparalleled creative class of supporting industries provides the High Point Market with an enviable and quality context for sustained growth.

The reason defines the interrelation and productivity of an amazing troika: the Market Authority, High Point EDC and Piedmont Triad Partnership. Together, they constitute three sturdy legs of a well-designed comfortable stool at the launching table of economic development.

For the global home furnishings industry the significance is overwhelming in favor of High Point and the Piedmont region as an area worthy of affordable expansion and rewarding relocation. The home of the High Point Market and surrounding counties are an attractive undervalued area whose return on investment merits international attention.

No similar distinction crowns Las Vegas or Nevada, both confronting financial, environmental and affordability challenges. As the business world has concluded, both the expensive home of the Las Vegas Market and World Market Center, as well as the landlocked State of Nevada are conspicuously missing from Site Selection’s top metropolitan rankings.

Despite the specious self-aggrandizing pronouncements gushing from the challenged World Market Center, Las Vegas neon’s harsh light is unable to illuminate a profitable path enough to entice, induce or attract home furnishings’ creative class to abandon a truly supportive High Point home to relocate to the costly desert.

Aside from a verifiable fact of prohibitive expense, traffic congestion, frenetic quality of life and high rents for showrooms and offices, few members of High Point’s creative class could ever imagine themselves actually residing there permanently.

But more importantly, the reason High Point and the Piedmont region are attractive to the home furnishings, high tech, pharmaceutical and other industry segments is the what Site Selection said of top business growth areas: Access to expanding companies, strong logistics support network, highly qualified and abundant labor pools, competitive business costs and what the publication characterized as good old-fashion ingenuity.

One more fact about High Point, the Piedmont and North Carolina: The people here are really nice, embracing and rarely condescending, snooty or haughty.

Remember, what happens in High Point furnishes the world. Make no mistake: The High Point Market has the goods, in stature, product assortment and magnitude, on the Las Vegas Market.

IMPORTANT ANNIVERSARY: In two years, Brian Casey’s steady hand on the High Point Market’s tiller is making a difference

Happy Anniversary to Brian Casey, with whom a supportive and grateful industry celebrates his achievement-filled two years leading the High Point Market Authority!

Arriving in High Point with an important mission, he hit the ground running with street-tested intelligence and confidence.

Quickly, he regrouped, strengthened and repurposed a staff of professionals, whom he credits for the Market Authority’s successes.

Under Brian’s authentic guidance, a small talented, hardworking and energetic staff has won over critics — including me — in congealing and extending the power and influence of the world’s premier home furnishings Market.

Brian’s effective, yet unassuming and disarming style constitutes the enduring strength and attraction of High Point Market supported by and in close proximity to a highly regarded creative class of industry executives, designers, studios, marketers and leading service providers of all types.

PAYING THE PRICE: Desperate retailers race to the bottom with tantalizing false hope of low prices

Desperate, delusional retailers believe low-balling fearful consumers will cause a stampede of business. Not in this new world.

Doing what you’ve always done only gives you want you’ve always got. At best, some possible short term success, but long term brand and credibility erosion.

Who cares, as long as you’re doing something-anything to drive business, even if the feel good activity of selling price actually masks sustainable accomplishment of transporting people to comfortable living.

The holy grail of price merchandising is wholly full of holes. And the first rule of holes is: Stop digging and praying that preying on consumers with low prices to get’ em into the stores is nothing more than mercantile idolatry.

FROM THE SUMMIT: The attraction and stability of the High Point Market exceeded expectations

In the midst of uncertainty, the tough-minded, intrepid merchants and manufacturers attended to their needs in ascending the High Point Market.

Surprise-surprise to the delight-delight of many showrooms, attendance and attitude rose to a higher point than what had been privately predicted and expected in High Point.

Of course, the reassuring validation of the strength of High Point rightly produces a positive spin. As an enduring institution, the Market's product and marketing opportunities for participants maintains a positive spin on business, even in challenging times.

Just ask the retailers and designers who invested in attending and ascending the High Point Market. From the summit of most showrooms, buyers received a return of powerful ideas and opportunities far greater in product and performance than if they remained at home. (In future postings here, learn how High Point is poised to overcome its challenges into a reconstituted juggernaut.)

As an indefatigable home furnishings village with its unique charm, the High Point Market continues to be a mercantile high point, a mountain range of business opportunity. It's where smart buyers find easier paths to ascend to the heights of their merchandising potential, allowing them to rise above, capturing and receiving breathtaking vistas of how to differentiate their stores and studios.

PREPARING FOR TURNAROUND: Rational reinvention paints a brighter horizon

Viva optimism! Yes, the current business cycle will change for the better, and it’s not next week, but it’s tomorrow, as in the future.

Riding the business cycle on a rocky road is fatiguing, frustrating and infuriating.

No easy choice, even though the map to smooth pavement is in our pockets, with a frightening catch: The map is blank, requiring action.

Yeh, you’ve got to be our own mercantile cartographer, mapping your own paths, and that means the road to better times starts now with planning and sound judgment.

For the best and brightest, much of that planning occurred this week here at the High Point Market, where the manifold choices offer real hope as well as way forward.

Too bad many wait-and-see retailers stayed away from the robust opportunity, whose cost in avoidance is incalculable and cannot be made up waiting for better times.

It’s too late to scramble when times begin to change. The verity of business Darwinism is clear: The strongest and most adaptable survive.

What retailers missed in High Point cannot be made up this summer in Las Vegas, where the bright neon masks a limited product assortment and the conspicuous absence of a critical mass of leading vendors.

Back to reality. Action speaks louder than woulds, as in, “I would make changes, if this and that happened.” Yaddah, yaddah, yaddah and the excuse horse you didn’t ride in on.

For timid merchants sitting on their assets and staying at the ranch, you can ride high. You get a second change in October. Start planning.

Remember, snooze, you lose.

FILLING UP HIGH POINT: Iconoclast High Pointer Scott Morgan makes waves in converting gasoline station into arty-edgy Cultural Embassy

Inimitable and irrepressible Scott Morgan knows how to capture attention with marketing esprit de corps. The transplanted Californian, by way of Maine, is making his mark on High Point with the Cultural Embassy and the home furnishings industry that has etched his life.

In a ramshackle abandoned High Point gasoline station at the corner of English Road and Elm Street, a few blocks from the heart of the main Market showroom district, Scott and artist friend Katy Allgeyer have pumped up, fueled and transformed an eyesore with an attractive assortment of home furnishings.

Debuting on April 5, the arty-edgy Cultural Embassy will greet delegations of marketgoers with a unique blend of high-end furniture (new, vintage, and antique), fine art, rare and beautiful objects, and the handcrafted rugs of the Himalayan Rug Company produced by women artisans in Nepal.

For unmistakable identity, the former filling station sports a happy goldfish — yet to be named — as an endearing symbol to be the “auspicious portal to good taste, fine art, great design, unusual furniture, handcrafted rugs, rare objects of beauty, and uniquely hip cultural experiences.”