How Interior design business owners and decorators can attend an interior design product and education market without being overwhelmed…!
There is an alternative.
One of the biggest challenges in having your own interior decorating and residential design business is finding home furnishings for your clients at a cost that enables you to make a reasonable profit. Keeping up with the trends and staying current with product knowledge can also be daunting.
The place that decorators from around the world go to see the latest in home furnishing trends is the High Point Furniture Market in High Point, North Carolina. The market, open only to the trade, consists of approximately 180 buildings, 11.5 million square feet of show space and home to almost 3,000 exhibitors who show there twice a year.
This is where Decorating Den Interiors goes to sort through the myriad of suppliers and products that encompass the home furnishings market. Here we can see the latest trends in color, furniture, lighting, floor covering, fabrics and accessories. This enables us to share with our clients what is happening now and what is on the horizon in the near future.
In addition, there are numerous seminars and discussions related to the design and home furnishings business. This is a great benefit if you are experienced in the industry; however, it can be a daunting task to select what is valuable to your business.
Deciding how many days you can be away from your business, which supplier showrooms to visit, which seminars to attend, and what other activities to work into your schedule, is a mind-boggling task. There also is the expense of travel and lodging.
Visiting these showrooms is really just window shopping unless you can get an account, which can be costly on its own. There is almost always a minimum dollar amount for your first order. There usually is a cost for samples and catalogs, too.
There is an alternative…organization, support and a plan
At Decorating Den Interiors, we have a way to cut through the confusion and make a smooth path for our design professionals to partner with suppliers, know the trends and become proficient in product information. In fact, they don’t even need to attend market if they choose not to. Our merchandising staff does it for them.
In addition to attending both High Point Markets every year, they are in constant contact with our more than 100 preferred suppliers who offer our franchisees individually owned accounts with well-known international brands, covering good, better, and best categories, and including top luxury brands.
To support our business owners, Decorating Den Interiors’ education staff attends numerous seminars at market, then share the information with our franchise partners and their teams, and build that new information into our franchisee ongoing education program. Some of the market speakers become speakers at our own annual international conference.
For those who do want to attend market, we organize an annual visit to the fall market. We plan a schedule, make sure we have supplier reps guide us through the showrooms, and we lead our group from place to place, with coordinated suppler and product briefings and education. We also have fabulous social events. . Many events are exclusive to Decorating Den Interiors. It all makes for the most efficient and cost-effective visit possible.
