Lifestyle expects mini-market crowd
By Heath E. Combs -- Furniture Today, December 17, 2006
High Point — They're coming here from as far away as Honolulu — again, says James Riddle, managing director of Life-style Enterprise.
The importer is booking airline and hotel reservations here for retailers who want to attend the second Forbidden City Furniture Show, a mini-market set for Jan. 15–17.
The event plays to Top 100 stores and container-only customers of the Asian case goods and leather upholstery marketer.
Lifestyle reported registering just over 500 attendees for the first show this past January.
The company is again planning to underwrite travel costs, which totaled several hundred thousand dollars last year, according to Riddle.
After attending the first Las Vegas Market in July 2005, Lifestyle executives decided not to attend a second show and instead set out to hold their own show in High Point. The company paid to fly in and house a number of retailers.
With buyers in town, more than 50 other manufacturers and importers also opened their showrooms.
Some attendees said they could envision the show replacing the premarket held a month before High Point's semiannual show. The event also won praise for not having the crowds and inconveniences of a typical market in the city.
Bob Roy, president of exhibitor Jofran, said he saw the benefit of opening his company's showroom because his Pacific Northwest sales rep said he would have five major retailers visiting the Lifestyle show.
Jofran wound up seeing 19 retailers during last January's event, more than it sees at High Point's premarket, Roy said. The company has prepared better for the show this year and will show product it wants to emphasize to retailers, he said.
"One of management's jobs is to visit our major retailers when appropriate. When they are willing to visit us in our showroom, we both gain from having the product there," Roy said.
Zahid Ali, vice president of two-store Miami retailer Ultimate Furniture, attended the Lifestyle show last year and said that, while he hasn't ruled the show out this year, he'll have to look at whether it fits in with his plans to reduce inventory by about half a million dollars before he relocates to a new, smaller store in mid 2007.
Ali said the Lifestyle event was the only furniture show he attended last year.
Lifestyle's Riddle said he expects a "couple hundred" people to attend. He said the company is starting to receive calls from other manufacturers hoping to have a captive audience during a non-market time in High Point. At press time, Lifestyle officials had not compiled a list of other manufacturers who would be open during its January show.
Riddle said Lifestyle is still working out the details, but the show will have entertainment and dinners on Monday and Tuesday evening.
The company has featured the event as a centerpiece of its advertising in recent weeks. Some ads have featured the famous photograph of U.S. Marines raising a flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima, with the slogan, "Together, We Shall Overcome!"
Lifestyle Enterprise is building a $10 million office and showroom building in downtown High Point. The 110,000-square-foot facility, to be known as Forbidden City II, should be completed in time for the fall 2009 market.
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Lifestyle expects mini-market crowd
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