IMC surveying retailers, vendors about trade shows
Information will help shape upcoming markets, executive says
Thomas Russell -- Furniture Today, August 3, 2011
AT THE MARKET — The new owners of major showroom buildings here and in High Point are conducting a market survey involving thousands of retailers and suppliers.
International Market Centers has hired an unnamed third party to conduct a study of markets and tradeshows - including but not limited to the High Point and Las Vegas markets. The goal is to learn more about what buyers and sellers of goods in the home furnishings industry think about markets, how often they attend or exhibit at various shows, and how they believe High Point and Las Vegas in particular can be improved.
The survey began in mid-July and will take from four to eight weeks to get all the results, said Bob Maricich, CEO of IMC. It will include phone interviews with hundreds of top executives of major home furnishings suppliers and retailers. An electronic survey also was recently sent to several thousand retailers and suppliers.
The survey targets the residential furniture, mattress, home accents and home décor industries, Maricich said.
"There are various components of it," he said. "There are some very in-depth interviews with industry leaders and those are done on a confidential basis.... In addition there are thousands of electronic surveys sent through email. We will keep doing it until we have, in the view of the experts, a truly ... high degree of (confidence in) what peoples' views are of markets."
He said a key goal is to determine what needs are currently unmet and how additional value can be created through the High Point and Las Vegas markets.
"Everything would come back to markets since we are involved in markets," he said.
"But it also is assessing elements of buyers and sellers coming together and what are the ways to do that efficiently and effectively. At the end of the day it is about how do we create more value through International Market Centers."
Maricich said it was too soon to say how the results would be communicated to the industry. Some of the information, he said, will be proprietary.
"I don't want to promise anything until we know what we have," he said.
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