4 Essential Market Events for Furniture and Home Goods in 2019
High Point, Las Vegas, Dallas, and Atlanta are all major hubs for the home furnishings industry. Each boasts a market center, containing hundreds of permanent showrooms, where thousands of brands exhibit at trade events throughout the year. Each city hosts multiple market events which attract tens of thousands of buyers from retailers ranging anywhere from big box giants to niche independent stores.
If you’re involved in the wholesale of home furnishing products and aren’t already familiar with these market events, you might want to consider setting up a permanent showroom or temporarily exhibiting at one or more of these events. Here’s an overview of the home furnishings market events in each of these cities for the 2019 season.
High Point Market
City: High Point, North Carolina
Event Location: Various locations across town
Time of year: April & October
Self-proclaimed as “fashion week for home furnishings,” the High Point Market is the largest trade show in the world for the furniture industry. This Market attracts such comprehensive participation that the show’s own organizers claim “if you can’t find it in High Point… it probably doesn’t exist.”
Each spring and fall over 75,000 retail buyers, interior designers, architects, and home furnishings sales professionals descend on 11.5 million square feet of show space spread over 180 buildings in High Point North Carolina that participate in the market. With over 2,000 exhibitors and tens of thousands of new product introductions, this is a “can’t miss” event for buyer teams from retailers of every shape and size, making the High Point Market perhaps the leading hub for the home furnishings industry globally.
Learn more about the High Point Market on the official website.
Las Vegas Market
City: Las Vegas, Nevada
Event Location: World Market Center
Time of year: January & July
Backed by the same organization as the High Point Market (International Market Centers), the Las Vegas Market is the leading cross-category wholesale market for gifts, home decor, and furniture. The World Market Center hosts over 5.4 million square feet of show space with permanent showrooms for more than 4,000 brands and temporary exhibits for over 530 gift and home lines.
As the largest event on or near the West Coast, market organizers highlight the show’s role as a focal point for West Coast home fashion and even suggest that the show’s “collection defines the West” on the website. Las Vegas’s friendly West Coast vibe is also emphasized - indeed, attendees can look forward to Vegas’s world-renowned entertainment venues and extensive, high quality, and competitively priced amenities.
Learn more about the Las Vegas Market on the official website.
Lightovation at the Dallas Total Home & Gift Market
City: Dallas, Texas
Event Location: Dallas Market Center
Time of year: January & June
Dallas Market Center is known by many as the International Home of Lighting, and the biannual Lightovation show is the premier event for both the residential and commercial lighting industry worldwide. Each January and June buyers attend the market to discover novel products, innovative brands, browse the most comprehensive assortment of fixed, portable and trend lighting, and learn about industry trends from a full slate of business education and networking events. In addition, the Total Home & Gift Market is hosted concurrently to Lightovation, offering a full range of home decor, gifts, gourmet foods, housewares, and accessories.
The 5 million square foot Dallas Market Center campus attracts nearly 200,000 retail buyers per year from all 50 US states and 85 countries around the world.
Learn more about Lightovation on the Dallas Market Center website.
The Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market
City: Atlanta, Georgia
Event Location: AmericasMart
Time of year: January & July
With 7 million square feet of show space in downtown Atlanta, AmericasMart hosts the largest collection of wholesale home furnishing, gift, area rug, and apparel products in the world. 9,000+ brands are exhibited across 1,400 permanent showrooms and 3,000 temporary exhibiting companies.
AmericasMart hosts 16 separate shows per year for specific product categories, with the International Gift & Home Furnishings Market and International Area Rug Markets taking place each January and July.
Learn more about the Atlanta International Gift & Home Furnishings Market on the AmericasMart website.
2019 Event Calendar
To help you plan your calendar, here are the events for the year in order of appearance.
Jan 8th to Jan 15th - Atlanta Market, Winter
Jan 16th to Jan 20th - Dallas Lightovation, Winter
Jan 27th to Jan 31st - Las Vegas Market, Winter
April 6th to April 10th - High Point Market, Spring
June 19th to June 22nd - Dallas Lightovation, Summer
July 9th to July 15th - Atlanta Market, Summer
July 28th to Aug 1st - Las Vegas Market, Summer
October 19th to 23rd - High Point Market, Fall