This year I’m THRILLED to cover the High Point Spring Market April 22-26 alongside nine other designers all chosen for the High Point Design Bloggers Spring 2017 Tour. In other words, we’re your feet on the ground (and 11.5 million square feet is a lot of ground to cover) and you can experience the market’s highlights and key takeaways through our insider eyes.*
*Disclaimer: You will probably see new products you can’t unsee. Expect to be introduced to cutting edge, and classic, pieces yet to hit the shelves. Get ready to learn about new lines and collections from some of the biggest, and most unexpected (Ellen DeGeneres!) names in the business.
Every spring and fall, the population of High Point, North Carolina nearly doubles. What brings more than 75,000 people to this working-class community about 75 miles northeast of Charlotte? High Point Market.
Those three words translate into some pretty impressive figures: 180 buildings, 11.5 million square feet of exhibit space, 2000+ exhibitors and tens of thousands of products and people from more than 100 foreign countries. Essentially, it’s a one-stop, albeit huge, shop for finding out what’s new, who’s who and how to do just about anything from reupholstering a chair to expanding your showroom. The fact that it’s held in North Carolina’s Triad (Greensboro, Winston-Salem and High Point) is no coincidence. This area has long been home to one of the largest furniture and textiles manufacturing hubs in the country. In fact, High Point is known as the furniture capital of the world. Case in point? The #2 thing to do in High Point according to Trip Advisor is visit the World’s Largest Chest of Drawers!
Seeing a four-story piece of furniture may not be on your bucket list, but if you want to get to the beating pulse of the heart of the home furnishings industry, you need to be at High Point Market. Alternatively, from the comfort of your couch or while on hold at your desk, you can follow me on Facebook, Instagram and my blog. I’ll be posting live updates using #DesignbloggersTour.
Along with my posts, please meet the other designers who’ll be reporting on all things fabulous from the Blog Tour:
Courtney Allison, www.frenchcountrycottage.net
Margot Austin, www.thedesigneditblog.com
Elle Cole, www.ellecoleblog.com
Nina Magon, www.livestylishdaily.com
Lisa Mende, www.lisamendedesign.blogspot.com
Michiel Perry, www.blacksouthernbelle.com
Ruthie Staalsen, www.decrenew.com
Laura Umansky, www.laurauinteriordesign.com
Rhoda Vickers, www.southerhospitalityblog.com
All this talk of impressive figures, and products aside, High Point Spring Market is a social affair. Nowhere else on earth is so much design talent and interest concentrated in the same place at the same time. The five-day event’s lineup includes enough cocktail hours you can reach your yearly champagne and cheese quota in one week. Or why not take a Master Class with Bunny Williams, learn how to turn your creative eye into a career from James Phoenix or pose with four-legged friends in a pooch-friendly furniture popup? Saturday night, you’ll find me singing along to Trisha Yearwood, this season’s headliner for the Stars Under Stars concert.
This fun and exciting tour couldn’t happen without the collaboration of Esteem Media and HighPoint Market…
And certainly not without our AMAZING Sponsors!! We will each be assigned to write about one of the sponsors in depth; I can’t wait to find out who I’ll be given to write about!
Whether you visit High Point Spring Market for one day, all five, or none and you simply sporadically follow along on social media, your chances of learning something new and being inspired for the months ahead are extremely high. After all, it’s High Point.
Hashtags: #DesignBlogersTour #HighPointMarket
Instagram: @highpointmarket