In the exactly 100-year history of the High Point Market, chances are there have been very few periods quite as troubling for the furniture business as the one the industry finds itself in now.
Always a cyclical business, furniture has taken perhaps the hardest hits from the current recession and housing market meltdown as any household product and if history is any guide, it will continue to take those hits long after other product categories have returned to better times.
For the most recent quarter, ended June 30, retail furniture sales were off just over 10 percent and at the wholesale level, the picture was even more dismal, with shipments down anywhere between 15 and 28 percent, depending on the product and country of origin.
It is against this background that the industry gathers once again in High Point for its twice-yearly market week. Expectations are relatively modest, spurred perhaps by recent encouraging news coming out of the residential housing market.
None the less, the market is likely to be impacted by the following developments:

•Vendors will get ever-more promotional, offering increased numbers of value-priced product designed to get dealers into their showrooms and, ultimately, consumers back into stores. This was clearly evident at last month’s Las Vegas Market where the promotional bandwagon was particularly crowded with case goods, upholstered and mattress introductions at reduced prices.

•That Las Vegas Market, held the same week as High Point Pre-Market and barely five weeks before the main event in High Point, did take its toll on business for some vendors. There were off-the-record reports that dealers held off ordering in Las Vegas, pending a look at additional introductions being made in High Point. Some vendors expressed displeasure at the move of the Las Vegas Market from late July to mid-September, even though they said the overwhelming number of dealers at the show were from west of the Mississippi River, with many having no plans to travel east this month to North Carolina.

•Real estate continues to contract in High Point with marginal buildings away from the Main Street heart of the market suffering lower occupancy rates. Showplace, the arc-shaped building that is the newest major facility in town, filed for bankruptcy earlier this year while the two major building operators—the International Home Furnishings Center and MMPI, which owns the Market Square and the National Furniture/Plaza complexes—are reported to be getting increasingly aggressive in their leasing activities, working to maintain fully rented buildings.

•Reports of the death of the High Point Market being pretty much dead wrong, the Market Authority that oversees the event is planning to put on a big birthday party marking 100 years since a group of local Southern furniture producers held the first market in town, There are several evenings of concerts and a variety of special activities all throughout market week to mark the centennial.
Whatever the events and behind-the-scenes distractions, new products will, as always, be the focal point of market and in this issue, HFN offers up a cross-section of High Point introductions.—Warren Shoulberg