With all due apologies to The Who, it’s time for some healing.
As the industry – or at least some of it – gathers this week in New York for spring market week, it once again faces an existential question that is has grappled with for years: What is the value of these markets?
The big difference now is that up until March 2020, that question was largely theoretical. The industry, buyers and sellers alike, pretty much kept conducting business as usual with no sense of urgency – much less emergency – to make any kind of change in the way it went about this process. Of course, Covid changed that, as it changed so many things, but the situation was further exacerbated by the sale and subsequent shutdown of the main market showroom building at 295 Fifth Avenue.
So, for the past two years the industry has proceeded on a meandering course that largely consisted of online meetings, virtual showroom product presentations and the occasional in-person visit when the stakes were high enough. In the process the international dynamic of the business, which had become critical for buying and selling, largely ceased to exist. Overseas travel was when you crossed the Hudson.
But now, this week is something different. Many companies – perhaps some is a better word – have taken new showroom space scattered about midtown Manhattan. If the recent housewares show earlier this month in Chicago is any indication, the industry can expect pretty decent in-person attendance from at least some people from most of the big retail national chains that dominate the business. There will still be some Zoom calls, but they are likely to be far fewer in number than the past four market seasons.
The combination of suppliers setting up new showrooms and buyers planning to visit in-person suggests a very obvious conclusion, but one many people have questioned since the pandemic began: the industry needs a market. It’s that simple. Anyone who doubts that – who maybe thinks the business got along OK without a market so we don’t really need one – has to be rethinking that theory.
The need for retailers to See, Feel, Touch (more really Be Touched) and ultimately Buy is as important as it ever was and no amount of digital magic is ever going to replace that. Granted, virtual can make some aspects of the buying process easier, more efficient and less of an ordeal.
But that face-to-face interplay is indispensable …and irreplaceable. It’s not just about product, it’s about the process and the people.
It’s why one has to hope the industry can figure out a way to reassemble some sense of cohesiveness when it comes to its physical presence in New York. Showrooms scattered about with no rhyme or reason are not only inefficient, but they also create the opportunity for some other market location to come in and offer a better solution. “Can’t happen here,” the home textiles industry will sa.“We have to be in New York.” But that’s the same thing the furniture, the lighting, the gift and the rug industries all said – and each one has largely decamped elsewhere.
The home textiles industry should not be the next one to get fooled…again.
Warren Shoulberg has reported on the gift and home industry for most of his career. He is often quoted in national media, such as The New York Times and CNN, and contributes to PBM publications, Forbes.com and The Robin Report.
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