Market attendance: Always a fuzzy picture
Lissa Wyman, Rug Editor -- Furniture Today, June 22, 2009
I received an interesting e-mail the other day from a reader who suggested I could answer a lot of questions about markets with some simple sleuthing. He suggested I get an "exact" market attendance figure from building management for the 2009 and 2008 summer markets, and then get attendance figures and sales results from the Top 20 rug exhibitors for 2009 and 2008. "I expect attendance will be down this summer, but it would be interesting to see if the customers attending are still generating positive results," he wrote.
I wish it could be that easy.
It is always difficult to get "exact" attendance figures at any market, and it is nearly impossible to even estimate how many buyers come to markets specifically for rugs. The major home furnishings market venues don't fine-slice their attendance statistics to determine which categories are being shopped. Even the Atlanta International Rug Market, the rug industry's largest show, is actually a part of the larger Gift & Home Furnishings Market.
If it's hard to get attendance figures from mart management, it's virtually impossible to get any numbers from exhibitors. Executives don't want their competition to know how many (or how few) people have come to their showrooms or what's selling (or not selling). They are especially hesitant when it comes to providing dollar figures on what has sold. (When I ask even mild-mannered money questions such as the cost of a new distribution center or a new Web site, the standard answer is: "None of your business.")
This stuff is not new. I have been attending furnishings markets since 1968, and people asked the same questions back then. Even the "information revolution" of the past 20 years has not provided a quantitative solution to the market attendance issue.
I think the reason it's so difficult to find answers to the market puzzle is not based on hard facts and figures. If there were quantitative solutions, we would just "run the numbers" and get a computer printout that would tell us — in black and white. It would finally answer the questions about when and where to hold markets, and whether they should exist at all.
But I don't think hard data can provide the answer to the real question, which is: "Are markets worth it?" The answer to that question comes from the gut, not the numbers.
I don't pretend to know the answers, but I can predict two events with some certainty. One, there will always be markets where buyers and sellers come together. Two, markets will always be in a state of change.
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