InsideFurniture

OPPORTUNITY LAS VEGAS: High powered delegations from every other home furnishings markets plan to seize real opportunity at Nevada’s regional trade show

Retailers need to know: Today is the first day of the rest of the life of Las Vegas regional home furnishings trade show.

With that obvious fact in mind, energized and directed delegations from major market centers in Atlanta, Dallas and High Point, plus representatives from San Francisco and Tupelo, are converging on the World Market Center, plus its distant temporary exhibitors five miles away at the MGM Grand Hotel.

The well-informed and prepared delegations believe they will score well out West with solid plans about sustainable opportunities they possess and can deliver. They are on an important marketing mission that affects retailers.

Those disciplined market teams will be conveying an important perspective to the Las Vegas exhibitors (who harbor some palpable concerns): That if some day if there isn’t a there there, then retailers will need to be prepared to go elsewhere, and all those market centers are more than willing to accommodate.

Of course, the biggest winner will be the High Point Market, the historic world home for home furnishings where a thriving creative class overpowers all others. Incidentally, that enveloping creative class of designers, marketers, suppliers, executives, manufacturers and others is the enviable foundation that sustains the High Point Market through thick and thin.

No one knows for sure whether the Las Vegas regional trade can ever be more than a neon regional event, appealing primarily to Western merchants.

Time will tell, and, of course, the concerned Las Vegas regional trade show managers could find a way to overcome any and all economic, financial and sustainable obstacles.

A telling indicator is whether the big, beautiful and expensive WMC Building C will open fully leased with permanent exhibitors.

If they can’t, then retailers needing greater assortment, selection and opportunity will need to make some important decisions.

DOES VERSUS IS: Romancing furniture is what it does and just selling furniture at a price is just is

Am I parsing words ala former President Bill Clinton when he famously (infamously) said, “It depends on what the meaning of the word is is.”?

Is doesn’t cut it, especially now. People are looking for ways to live more functionally and comfortably.

Don’t you think that story needs to be told and retold enough?

Just selling casegoods and upholstery is bland, unimaginative and boring. Look at the promotions and advertising. It just is, and is isn’t good enough. Never was and never is.

People respond to what furniture does, and that’s the romance: All those thoughts, feelings and emotions where and how furniture transports you.

People want the romance all the time. And you can’t have romance without good floorplay, and that’s the in-store experience to confirm the romance.

Ways of learning how to convey what furniture does. Look at the messaging of all other consumables. And in good furniture industry tradition, knock off the gist, the heart of the message and incorporate it.

Accenting what furniture does is the right way to achieve the ARC, attraction, retention and conversion.

Furniture does what is can’t.

MOVING FORWARD: Back to blogging after family sadness

Good to be back to routine after a death in our family.

Of course and in due course, many subjects to address.

For sure, seeing what's happening out at next week's Las Vegas regional trade show will be fascinating.

Who'll be there and who isn't and why is worth telling, don't you know? And so is to see how many retailers may side step the scattered desert show in favor the High Point Market will be fun to observe?

The credit crunch is crunching our industry. How much of the crunch will take a bite out of the impact of China, where some of the factories are nervously idling.

Take care. Thanks for your thoughts, support and encouragement.

WHAT’S IN A NAME?: A rose by any other name would smell just as sweet, and a furniture store can still become a rose

What’s in store is renamevention? Think about it. As a word, furniture, is harsh, unromantic and not dreamy. And the dreadful linear connection with store, as in furniture store, is, well, certainly not sublime, either.

Instead, think design, style, studio, interiors, all powerful concept words that mentally prompt, position, connect and transport us to ways of attaining dreams and the desireable possibility of comfortable living.

A new car dealer isn’t known as Cutler Car Dealer. Yuck-sounding, for sure.

Then why is a dream merchant blessed with fabulous interior options dragging himself down as a furniture store? Tradition? Reflex? Reflux?

Back to automobiles. A Honda automobile store is more welcoming as Cutler Honda, a name trading on the equity of Honda and its marketing communiations.

The same goes for furniture and home furnishings. Cutler Design Studio and Interiors conveys a little more romance and possibility than Cutler Furniture, doesn’t it?

The business of furniture and home furnishings merchandising is mercantile dream weaving, not selling.

Helping people achieve their dreams produces more than just selling furniture in a furniture store.

BANG FOR THE BUCK: Retailers seeking to maximize their market-going dollars need to consider where they get the highest return

The demonstrative international High Point Market provides merchants with the greatest return on their investment: More showrooms and greater merchandise selection.

If product and assortment are critical, then the choice is clear, especially since this is the time merchants plan their merchandising and marketing plans for the all important third and fourth quarter business opportunities.

Consider some interesting comparatives:

At the incomplete regional Las Vegas trade show: Approximately 881 exhibitors, with 530, or 60 percent, are exclusive and 351, or 40 percent, showing there and in High Point.

At the larger and definitive High Point Market: Approximately 2,000 exhibitors, with 1,649, or 82 percent, are exclusive, and 351, or 18 percent, also showing at the Las Vegas regional trade show.

With dollars tight in a challenging business environment, merchants visiting the smaller regional Las Vegas trade show could easily be misallocating their precious funds. Size, scope and breadth do make a difference.

Again, prudence would ask why invest in a Nevada trade show where there’s fewer exhibitors, less assortment and the higher costs of navigating a crowded, expensive circus town that’s Las Vegas?

That said, attending the in-depth High Point Market isn’t without some different challenges. But when you weigh all factors — especially elements for business survival — the scope and breadth of the larger High Point Market is a far greater value in business opportunity for both retailers and manufacturers.

Incidentally, if the organizers of the Consumer Electronics Show feel a need to go public with serious threats to abandon Las Vegas over rising complaints about higher food and lodging costs in the desert, doesn't that legitimate concern confirm a reality way out there?

Nothing in business is easy. If retailers want to survive without working hard, well just let your reps “objectively” guide you.

Conversely, if merchants want to guide their own future, take control and go where the business action can more easily produce a greater return on time and dollar investment, the choice is clear, and that's at the more comprehensive High Point Market.

Again by contrast, if the cacophonic context of Las Vegas is more important for concentrating on business survival, then go where the home furnishings pickin’s are slimmer and the delusional city lights are temporarily dazzling.

But if you are in need finding ways of succeeding in differentiating your business for survival, you are more likely to succeed at the High Point Market than elsewhere.

The High Point Market is where the reward comes from authority, comprehensive product assortment and enviable size overwhelms an incomplete, expensive regional Las Vegas trade show.

There’s considerably more bang for the retailer’s buck at the High Point Market.

Keep in mind, in the world of home furnishings, High Point is a real world market center, not just in name, but in postion, purpose and performance.

VIVA COST VEGAS: Rising Vegas costs may force Consumer Electronics Show to leave, which could have implications for other trade shows there

The trade show chips may be going down in Las Vegas. Officials of the mammoth Consumer Electronics Show say rising lodging and food costs in Las Vegas may force the big show to find a new home, according to a news report.

What a CES departure means to other Las Vegas trade shows is yet to be seen, but the impact of this news will certainly reverberate, causing some profound doubts. How this news affects the Las Vegas Market's future could be dicey.

From the MSNBC’s website:

NBC News and MSNBC, January 8, 2008

LAS VEGAS - Las Vegas’ 31st International Consumer Electronics Show could be one of its last, organizers said Monday, saying they believe they can get a cheaper deal elsewhere.

CES, the largest consumer electronic trade show in America, brings in hundreds of millions of dollars in non-gaming revenue to Las Vegas each year. But CES officials told NBC affiliate KBVC of Las Vegas that the price of doing business has gone up every year, so much so that they are considering moving to another city.

“We’ve heard from our attendees, from our exhibitors ... that the rates of hotels during the International CES are increasing out of proportion from what they think it should be,” said Jason Oxman, chief spokesman for the show’s organizer, the Consumer Electronics Association.

Some hotels charge more than five times what they normally charge during the four-day event, organizers said. They also require rooms to be booked in three- or four-night blocks and add food and beverage guarantees on top.

Glenda Brungardt, trade show and event manager for HP Imaging & Printing Marketing, told the Las Vegas Sun that the company had cut 12 percent to 15 percent of its show personnel because of rising costs. Hotel costs, she said, are the top complaint.

Some of the 140,000 people attending the show are beginning to chafe.

“Compared to the facility and service, the price is too high,” Vivian Davis of Shanghai, China, told KVBC. “Others say the prices of Las Vegas hotel rooms are on par with places like Berlin or Frankfurt.”

The Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority said in a statement that it was listening carefully “to the concerns of trade show partners.” It said it was in discussions with hotel industry leaders and CES representatives.

CES organizers said the show would be back next year but said they were planning to pursue new, less expensive arrangements.

Here's another story from today's Las Vegas Review Journal addresses the same subject.

THE YEAR OF AUTHENTICITY: More than ever consumers seek authentic business partners, rejecting the flimflam for what it is

Change is in the air. Not only is rabid change so critical and appealing in Presidential politics, but change in mercantile relationships will be more important in 2008.

Wary consumers just want the truth, real value and honesty in the market place. They will not settle for less.

Dwindling and precious consumer discretionary dollars will not be thrown away on the retail gimmicks of old.

No merchant or manufacturer can afford to conduct what has become business as usual, and that means getting business any way you can get it. Foohey.

The pervasive feeling that “someone’s out to screw me” is etched into consumers' minds. Many reasons exist, with caveat emptor right on top as the sales robbing license to defraud.

Rare are declarations in support of the greater good. When was the last time you read a quote about acting in the best interests of consumers? Foohey again.

Instead, the law of the mercantile jungle — caveat emptor — produces an an ever downward spiraling version of every man and woman for him and herself. That’s nothing more than a metastasizing mercantile cancer.

Righteous individualism is the answer. To paraphrase the Talmud's edict on saving one life you save humanity: Save the honor of one consumer you save your business and serve the greater good.

The smartest merchants and manufacturers are persons of integrity who are fearless and courageous in serving others.

Want to know the benefit of acting responsibly? Just read Joe Nocera’s column in last Saturday’s New York Times: Put Buyers First? What a Concept.

GOOD TIMES ENSHROUDED: New thinking opens vistas for advocating benefits of comfortable living with home furnishings

Of course, you think I’m crazy for my optimism! Why be morose when you can be vigilantly optimistic? Yes, even in these uncertain times.

Now is the time for merchants to gain market share. Certainty within economic uncertainly can prevail, with planning and recognition that progress requires change.

With fresh thinking and innovative methods smart retailers can attract and sustain more business. This is not crazy, stupid thinking.

What is crazy, stupid thinking is the reliance on instinktive merchandising that remains constant in a dynamic business climate. If you do what you've done, you'll get what you got in 2007.

In other words, doing the same things and expecting different results is, well, crazy and stupid, no?

Survival demands intrepid action. Recognizing and seizing opportunities is always more fruitful than relfexively struggling to find or buy results with illusionary silver bullets.

For 2008, my assumption remains the same as in past years. People want to live more comfortably, and that’s Job 1 for smart merchants.

Sales and gimmicks are passé. People will invest in comfortable living when they are adequately persuaded a comfortable home makes sense, more sense than an expensive automobile.

The job of the retailers, backed by courageous industry resolve, is providing the tools and methods.

Some powerful tactics include:

Using the internet as as powerful compass directing people to benefit from your unique presentaton that transports them to sustained enjoyment and comfort

• Demystifying the rigors of identifying value within a confusing context of style and design
• Enumerating design ideas, using decorative accessories and home accents as economic paths to building and sustaining relationships
• Providing sustained comfort for better living with home furnishings
• Identifying home-based entertaining and dining ideas
• Transforming stores into design and style studios instead of sale emporiums

High Point Market

HAPPY NEW YEAR 2008!