If you weren't there, you missed a lot
Ray Allegrezza, Editor in Chief -- Furniture Today, December 14, 2009
What do you call it when more than 240 of the industry's leading retailers and suppliers gather to listen, learn, network and tackle some of the biggest issues facing the industry?
I call it Furniture/Today's 13th Annual Leadership Conference and if you missed it, you really missed a lot!
The retailers in attendance represented a who's who of our industry and included Art Van, Ashley Furniture HomeStores, Badcock Home Furniture & more, Bograd's, City Furniture, CSN stores, Carl's Furniture, Discovery Furniture, El Dorado, Fiore Furniture, Four Corners Home, Furniture Fair, Furniture First, Furniture Marketing Group, Gorman's, HOM Furniture, Homemakers, Jane Eyre Home Furnishings Stores, Johnny Janosik, Kittle's, Knoxville Wholesale Furniture, Leon's Furniture, Mega Group, Mueller's Furniture, Nebraska Furniture Mart, PMD, Robb & Stucky, Rooms To Go, Slumberland, Thomasville Stores, Value City and Weekends Only.
Ditto for the suppliers. We had an A to Z list that included everyone from Michael Amini of AICO to Jim Ziozis of Linon and Powell.
I'd be remiss if I didn't publicly thank our sponsors for helping us make this event happen. Our headline sponsor, AICO, was joined this year by Agio, Ashley, Ausen Home Furnishings Center, Avanguard Innovative, Berg Furniture, Coaster Fine Furniture, Cory Home Delivery, 3F Famous Furniture Fair, Four Hands, Furniture Brands International, Hickory Springs, Home Line Furniture, Julius M. Feinblum Real Estate, Leggett & Platt, MSI Solid State Lighting, Natura World, Serta, Therapedic International and The Canadian Home Furnishings Market.
We kicked the event off with a keynote from a leading economist, Barry Asmus. He was followed by Gary A. Williams, founder of wRatings, a firm that monitors 5,000 companies each week to measure how well they meet customer expectations.
Furniture Brands' Debbie Beers and I co-presented the findings of a proprietary survey that looked at the impact of the recession on consumers' intent to purchase home furnishings.
Our Hometown Heroes panel had presentations from five successful retailers, ranging from Leon's, the big Canadian furniture store chain, to Four Corners Home, a small and highly focused retail operation based in Asheville, N.C.
That's just a portion of what took place. Check out this week's paper and our Web site.
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