High Point Keeps Changes Coming

Staff -- Tradeshow Week, 9/4/2006

The country's largest home furnishings market has a new, yet familiar, name: High Point Market. The moniker, said Market Authority President Brian Casey, came from what people around the world have for years been calling the former Intl. Home Furnishings Market in High Point, N.C.,

anyway.

Casey said the name change was not meant to redirect the market's focus regionally, as the new tagline, "The world's home for home furnishings," and a new international outreach program indicate.

"In no way, shape or form are we losing the international component," Casey said. "People internationally who are already familiar with it already refer to it as the High Point Market. From a branding perspective, and some research we've done, the new name just made sense."

The change is the latest in a string made under Casey's leadership, which began in April. The former SmithBucklin executive ran his own consultancy, Next Generation Events, before joining the High Point Market Authority.

Apart from the rebranding, Casey considers his most important accomplishments since taking the job to have been revamping the market's registration system, hiring furniture industry veteran Kimberley Wray as vice president of marketing (a position he created) and convening a task force comprising representatives from hotels that serve the market.

"High Point is different from most other major tradeshow cities," he said. "We have hotels scattered around the region that are not necessarily part of international chains." The task force's goal is consistency in service to market visitors.

Asked whether all the changes were in response to competition from the two-year-old World Market Center in Las Vegas, Casey said, "No. Everything we're doing is to improve on what we were already doing. We're taking a long, hard look at all aspects of the (High Point) market."