Why you should take the conference plunge
By Tom Edmonds, Contributing Editor -- Furniture Today, April 28, 2002
I have the best collection of polo shirts, coffee mugs and tote bags in my neighborhood, but not all my neighbors are jealous because all bear furniture company logos.
I attend several furniture-industry conventions, conferences and other confabs every year. The shirts and other trinkets are my souvenirs, which is nice even if one does start to resemble a walking billboard.
The free stuff hardly justifies jumping on a plane and spending a few days in meeting rooms at a resort. But the content and the networking do, and that's why I'd like to urge more retailers to take the plunge and register for several of these events every year.
Goodness knows, there's no shortage of events to choose from, although not all of them will be appropriate for you. If you're a multi-line retailer, chances are your software vendor or buying group has an annual event. If you must stay close to home, the local chapter of the National Home Furnishings Assn. may have a program with a speaker specializing in some aspect of furniture retailing.
Sure, you say, retail is tough work with long hours. It's rare when you can take time away from the store, and when you do, you aren't necessarily looking to go do more furniture-related stuff. My response is that your job is too difficult not to go out looking for new ideas. One of these conferences may just give you the idea that fills your store with customers or makes you more efficient in serving them.
I wish I had a nickel for every time a retailer has told me they pick up at least one good idea at each event. That one good idea pays for the trip, at least, and the rest is gravy. Quite often, they say, the gravy flows deep.
And yet, the core group of people attending doesn't change much from year to year, and actually may be shrinking. There are more than 10,000 furniture retailers across North America, and yet only a few hundred attend the major enrichment events for our industry.
But the people who do show up keep returning year after year. Doug Wolf of Wolf Furniture in Pennsylvania brought more than 10 employees to Orlando for the recent NHFA convention. Maybe a company that sold most of its stores to Heilig-Meyers in the early 1990s and then rebuilt itself into a Top 100 contender sees the value of networking with other retailers and attending a couple days of seminars.
And why do I see Jennifer Phillipps of Furniture Classics in Altamonte Springs, Fla., everywhere I go? Her store is only 14,000 square feet. Nonetheless, Jennifer does a very nice piece of business, way above average. And she wants to do more. That's why she attended the SOHO Today conference recently, as well as the NHFA convention and several other events. She wants to open a home office shop, and she wanted to learn more about the category.
Unlike me, Jennifer has too much class to wear those shirts with the logos. And yet she keeps showing up for all the programs, taking new ideas back to the store, which seems to run just fine in her absence. Maybe she's on to something.
-
Huck Finn's Reels in Shoppers
Oct 12, 2011 -
Durham line finds balance
Apr 18, 2012 -
Wolf Opens Consignment Store
Oct 12, 2011 -
Nationwide adds two Web vendors
Apr 14, 2012
Featured Company
-
Wright Labels
Bill and Tom Wright founded Wright of Thomasville in 1961 on the idea that printing was a creative medium and the belief that "a promise made is a promise kept." The Wright brothers focused their attention on providing exceptional printing for the... more
VIEW ALL GALLERIES
