We recently exhibited at our first High Point Market in High Point, North Carolina. This was also our first time attending High Point. We learned many lessons as a first time furniture exhibitor and selected our top five exhibitor tips to share with the community.
High Point Market is the largest home furnishings trade show in the world — taking place each April and October. The Market’s 70,000-80,000 attendees include exhibitors, buyers, designers, and media in the furniture industry.
The Market energy is contagious and inspiring. For a visual summary of our first market, check out our Instagram highlight and reels, and our blog recap.
High Point Exhibitor Tips
1. Pack for Delivery
We personally packed and drove our furniture to High Point with the expectation that we would be unloading and unpacking it ourselves. While we intended to handle all the product movement ourselves, we weren’t prepared for the loading dock process. As owner, designer and shipper, we wanted to micromanage the whole process.
We carefully wrapped and packed everything into a cargo van, then drove cautiously for 8+ hours to North Carolina.
When we arrived at the building loading dock, we unloaded all of our items … only to see our products disappear (temporarily) into the dock and freight elevators. At that point, we realized our furniture would be out of our control for about an hour and feared it could be damaged.
The dock and contract labor workers will help you unload your vehicle and move items to your exhibit space. We did not plan for the workers to be moving our furniture to our exhibit space. While we covered the furniture for the drive, it was not completely covered on the moving carts.
We do recommend following our example for how to pack your accessories. We packed the accessories by display area and took pictures for reference which sped up the unpacking and decorating process.
Tip 2: Pack for Return
While unpacking your furniture and setting up your showroom space, remember that you’ll need to pack it all up to return it home. Take pictures of how you packed and filled the boxes. Take videos while unpacking and note ideas for improvement. Additionally, label the component and hardware bags to ease packing and investory counting.
Tip 3: Purchase the Lead Scanner
We recommend purchasing the lead scanner to capture the contact information of the people you speak to. An attendee list is typically included with the purchase. Note, the attendee list may not include email address (ours did not).
Attract visitors with a giveaway that requires entry – it’s a good conversation starter. We suggest one of your products, a popular technology or industry product, gift cards, or speciality alcohol. Our raffles included one of our cutting boards and a bottle of commemorative Kentucky Derby Woodford Reserve (see winner below).
We also found that having a small tschotske prompted people to pause at our space. Such as mints and small snacks.
Tip 4: Carefully Select your Location
We recommend that you attend a market before purchasing an exhibit space. High Point is expansive and overwhelming for first time exhibiters.
High Point is very spread out — encompassing over 11 million square feet of showrooms with 2,000 exhibitors in 180 buildings. If you can attend before being an exhibitor, you can observe what areas and buildings best match your product and target audience.
Recommendations:
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- Research showroom design, decorations and set up among similiar size exhibitors. Take decorations to make your space feel inviting and comfortable. Such as carpets, plants, art and lamps.
- Make conversation with people as they pass your area. Be in front of your exhibit, not sitting at a desk or behind a table.
- People like to use all of their senses in your space. They want to touch, feel, smell and move products around to visualize them in their own space. Leave open space between your items and furniture. A cluttered space is not inviting.
- Network with your exhibit neighbors. They are an excellent resource for feedback on the location and traffic, and on your product. And it’s fun!
Tip 5: Marketing
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- Pre-event outreach — It’s more important that we imagined.
- Landing Page — Create a landing page with your location, product announcements, social links and more. Our Tedesco~Rosa High Point Fall 2024 landing page.
- Handouts + QR codes — Include a QR code for people to scan to save your product portfolio and contact information on their phone.
- Social Media — In addition to promoting yourself, promote your neighbors and complementary products. Your profile is more trustworthy when you aren’t all self-promotion.
- Observe the social media posts and traffic of a prior market before you attend. You can connect with influencers to post about your product and find photo and video formats that do well. Start with the High Point Market and Jessica Duce Instagram accounts.
We hope our High Point exhibitor tips are helpful to future exhibitors. Please share your tips in the comments.
We look forward to the Spring 2025 Market in April. Registration is open and we will share our exhibit location soon.