Today I awoke in Greensboro, North Carolina. It’s another day at the High Point Furniture Market for me. This is my second full day here and even though I have walked over 9,000 steps each day (plus my 4 mile run today) I am feeling good and have one more day in me. I am here with another designer on a joint project to buy some last minute furniture and products for a joint venture project. For those that don’t know – because I didn’t know anything about this “Market” in school – It is the largest residential buying market in the US (Milan Furniture Fair is the largest Globally.) It covers the whole town of High Point with more showrooms and product than I can take in visually…definitely visual overload! (By the end, I hate to say, everything looks the same.)

Even though I spend most of my time in the commercial sector and am a huge fan of NEOCON, the largest commercial buying market in the world, this Market does have great products and many of the same vendors that have cross over. It is a great place to come and see and buy.

The day events go like this:

Breakfast. Drive to the Market (or take the free shuttle from your hotel). Walk store after store, with an occasional appointment with a certain vendor/manufacturer. Lunch at one of those vendor’s showroom. More store hopping and product buying until about 5:30, dinner (or if you are me, a run though some random park. Dinner.  Drop, with your feet up preparing for another day.

Here are some photos showing trends of the Market.

  

Blue was definitely the color of the residential market this year. It was everywhere.

 

There were some obvious lighting trends as well. These are some of my favorite:

     

This is my favorite show room from the trip: Bolier Co. and a table there that I found quite interesting, in the sense of how it was constructed.

One of the fun things about the trip was all the famous people I saw this time around.

Jane Seymour was on my plane and though it was only her side profile, it was really her, because I spoke with her.

I happened to mention that my wife loved her and I had just seen two movies that she was in: Scarlet Pimpernel, and Austenland…she didn’t seem to be too flattered with the mentioning of that last one…

Keno Brothers, best known from Antique Road show.

Gary Friedman, president of Restoration Hardware

Thomas O’Brien, commomly known for his designs at Target, but is much much bigger than that. I want his job.

As was often heard around Highpoint, “Are you having a good Market?” Hopefully from the above you will see my answer to this was a resounding “Yes!”