Special Order by Larry Thomas

Live from CES: L&P’s high-tech bed a hit

Happy day for Starry Night

By Larry Thomas

LAS VEGAS — As he neared the end of his first day as an exhibitor at the Consumer Electronics Show, Mark Quinn was pumped.

Quinn, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Leggett & Platt’s bedding business, couldn’t have been more pleased with reaction to the company’s high-tech Starry Night bed.

“This is not just taking a product to market. It’s putting something on the world stage,” he said. “There are 22,000 new products here … and the feedback we’ve received on this one has been incredible.”

Quinn already has talked to reporters from CBS, NBC, MSNBC, Business Week and Forbes, and that is generating considerable buzz for the bed.

Starry Night is a key part of an exhibit called NextGen Home that shows how virtually every function in the home — from lowering the blinds to adjusting the oven temperature — can be integrated using a new software package called Lifeware.

 “The fact that we are here at CES says a lot about where we are headed as a company,” said Quinn. “We want to be seen as the innovation leader in our business.”

He said the new bed, whose features include dual programmable temperature controls, an iPod docking station and Internet connectivity, also will be on display in the Fashion Bed Group showroom the first two days of the upcoming Las Vegas furniture market.

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If you like the thin profile of most flat-screen televisions, then you’ll love several of the newest LCD and plasma models that are being unveiled here.

LG Electronics has a new 42-inch LCD that is only 1.7 inches thick, while Samsung and Panasonic have 52- and 50-inch versions that are just one inch thick.

Not to be outdone, Sharp is showing off several prototype LCD televisions that are less than one inch thick — 20 millimeters to 35 millimeters to be exact.

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Today, I’m planning to visit the World Market Center in the morning to check out some of the 20 showrooms that are open there.

Part of my afternoon will be spent covering a panel discussion starring some heavyweight retail executives, including the CEOs of Circuit City and Best Buy and the general merchandise manager for consumer electronics at Target. Should be a great discussion!

Live from CES

Business editor Larry Thomas is covering this week’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, and will be filing daily reports on furnituretoday.com.

LAS VEGAS — Wearing his trademark v-neck sweater, Bill Gates once again wowed an audience at the annual Consumer Electronics Show with 90 minutes worth of gee-whiz demonstrations of gadgets that a furniture guy like me doesn’t pretend to understand.

But for the tens of thousands of computer geeks and electronics aficionados who come here every year to see the latest and greatest stuff, Gates is a god.

And some might not use a lowercase “g.”

People began lining up more than four hours prior to his speech — wristbands were issued this year to prevent early-arrivals from saving seats for their friends — and the line was cut off about two hours prior to the 6:30 p.m. starting time. Hundreds who couldn’t get a seat in the Venetian Hotel theater watched a closed-circuit telecast in an adjoining ballroom.

Gates, who has delivered a keynote address at CES the past 10 years, is known for getting assists from celebrities, and he didn’t disappoint this year. Slash, a guitarist with the rock band Velvet Revolver, demonstrated how to play Guitar Hero on the Xbox 360, and NBC sportscaster Bob Costas helped him announced NBC’s partnership with MSN for broadband coverage of this summer’s Olympic Games in Beijing.

“Stop calling me, Bill. Lose my number,” Costas intoned. “There’s no place for you on our broadcast team.”

The trade show, which is expected to draw 140,000 people from 140 countries, officially opens today. I’m planning to visit the booths of several of the major HDTV manufacturers, and also look at the latest and greatest entertainment furniture on display.

Many of the furniture exhibitors here sell only to consumer electronics retailers, but a growing number are trying to place products in both the CE and traditional furniture store channels.

As an added bonus, the World Market Center, home of the furniture industry’s Las Vegas Market, is welcoming CES visitors with open arms — as well as free food and shuttle service between the WMC and the Las Vegas Convention Center, where CES takes place. At last check, 20 WMC exhibitors were scheduled to be open today and Tuesday.

Copenhagen fair faces a familiar challenge

While chatting with exhibitors at last month’s Copenhagen International Furniture Fair, it was refreshing to hear them focus on the design and style of their products rather than the price or the minimum order requirements for container delivery. 

The Danes always have taken pride in their design and craftsmanship, and it was evident throughout the Bella Center, Copenhagen’s largest convention and trade show venue. But, alas, Copenhagen exhibitors did have one refrain similar to one I’ve heard countless times at dozens of U.S. furniture shows: There are too many markets. 

Several exhibitors said they were being stretched thin since Copenhagen’s show occurred about two weeks after the show in Milan, Italy, and two weeks before the International Contemporary Furniture Fair in New York. 

A number of Copenhagen’s exhibitors — most of whom are based in Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands — also exhibit at one or both of those major shows, and several acknowledged it’s becoming harder to financially sustain a booth at more than one. 

When I heard that complaint, I thought, for a moment, that I was standing in High Point or Las Vegas or Tupelo. 

And unfortunately for the accommodating folks who run the Danish fair, the Copenhagen show appears to be suffering a lot more than Milan or ICFF. 

Attendance at Copenhagen, which is run by the Bella Center with an assist from the Assn. of Danish Furniture Inds., was pegged at 12,619. That’s a 13.4% drop from the 14,578 who attended the 2006 fair, and the third straight year of declining attendance. 

Although I don’t have exact figures, organizers admitted the exhibit area was smaller than 2006. And major Scandinavian producers such as Jesper and Tvilum-Scanbirk were nowhere to be found. (Both had large showrooms when I attended the Copenhagen show in ‘02.) 

In addition to being scheduled so close to Milan and ICFF, exhibitors said the Copenhagen event is being hurt by the rapidly growing Stockholm Furniture Fair, which takes place in February. 

At the most recent Stockholm show, attendance was 32,114, more than 2½ times the Copenhagen number. According to the fair’s Web site, attendees came from 53 countries. 

Copenhagen, on the other hand, welcomed attendees from 14 countries, including 86 people from the United States. (The number of U.S. attendees in Stockholm wasn’t available, but a couple of exhibitors who show in both Stockholm and Copenhagen said they see very few Americans at the Swedish event.) 

So it seems clear that European furniture shows are facing challenges similar to their U.S. counterparts. They’re having to compete with a bevy of other industry shows to attract buyers and exhibitors whose time and money are increasingly limited.