Our Trip to the High Point Furniture Market
And Tips on How to Make the Most of the Experience
Lindsey and Blakely here from the Carbon 6 Interiors team! We recently went to the High Point Furniture Market in North Carolina, to get the industry’s inside scoop on trends and consumer preferences for the upcoming year, and of course to set up some new accounts! It was my first time (Blakely) so I was happy to be going with Lindsey who has been before and had a clear plan of what we were going to accomplish on this trip... Which is our first point:
Tip #1: Have A Plan
Lindsey had a list of places that were a priority for the trip. To name a few:
- Noir
- Selamat
- Circa Lighting
- Gabby
- Nuevo
- BDI
- Four Chairs
- Umage
- Arteriors
- SUNPAN
- Hudson Valley Lighting
After identifying these we used the High Point Market app which helped us map out where these places are, which building, what floor, etc and set a plan for where we were going to be and what we were going to see each day.
Tip #2: Be okay if your plan gets completely DERAILED
All it takes is one 15 minute plane takeoff delay and you are now spending your entire day at the Atlanta airport. Unfortunately, this happened to us. After a race to try and still make our plane after a delayed landing, our plane left without us… and we completely lost out on a whole day of the market. But it was okay because instead of getting discouraged and crossing destinations off of our list, we woke up early the next day and hit it HARD.
Normally we would recommend you space out your visits to a manageable amount of walking and talking, but in desperate times you can do like we did, lace up your comfy shoes (truthfully we should’ve worn comfier shoes) and cover some ground.
Tip #3 Wear comfy shoes.. seriously
I heard this tip many times before I left for the trip and I still didn’t listen. So going to keep this one short and sweet: wear your sneakers. My feet were wrecked after a day in what I previously thought were comfortable shoes. They are dead serious when they say you do a lot of walking!
Tip #4: Take pictures instead of notes
With a million things to see and make heart-eyes at, taking pictures was how we went about taking physical notes for when we got back from the trip. Whenever we walked into a store we took a picture of the exterior or a nearby logo which signified in our photo library every pic was from that store. We took pictures of price tags too. And mirror selfies…
This also helped us avoid having to take and lug around the massive catalogs suppliers offer, just ask for a digital version to be emailed! Instead, leave your bag space available for free swag. There is a ton of freebies including tote bags, snacks, cute mini tape measures, wine toppers, you name it.
Tip #5 Leave room in your suitcase for swag to bring home!
Many showrooms had some cute items we couldn’t resist! Including:
- “Goal Digger” sparkly tote bag from Tov
- Portable Tape Measure from Sunpan
- Healing Crystals from Aviva Stanoff
- Treats (We didn’t have to leave room in the suitcase for these…)
If we had more suitcase room we probably would’ve snagged a few more cute tote bags, a lot of the vendors have them and we love a good reusable bag for toting around things or bringing to the grocery store!
Tip #6 Do the fun things
We got a lot done in the two days we were able to be at the market. As productive as we were, we also stopped to take a breather when we needed it. Our two favorite “us” moments
- Stopping for free freshly made Crepes with ALL the toppings of your choice
- Taking a break at Panasonic for luxury chair massages
You can get burnt out pretty quickly at an event like this, so these little breaks were a highlight to our days and kept us energized and happy event-goers!
It was a quick but amazing trip. We hit everything we planned on seeing but also discovered some amazing new places along the way! Here are some stores we stumbled upon that we will be definitely be going back to next time:
- Sika-Design
- Lux-Art Silks
- Adesso
- Mobican
- Tov
Looking for more trip highlights? Check out our @Carbon6interiors Instagram travel highlights!
Stay-tuned for trends we loved from High Point Market and that we think will be big for the design industry in 2020.
We have some exciting projects underway, and can’t wait to share them with you soon!
-- The Carbon 6 Interiors Team