HIGH POINT, North Carolina – The online registration desk for the upcoming Spring 2021 edition of the High Point Market (HPM) is now open for furniture and home furnishings buyers from both Canada and the United States as well as exhibitors, other industry professionals, members of the press and students, the organizers have announced. The event is set to open on Saturday, June 5 for its normal five-day run.

Industry professionals interested in attending can visit www.highpointmarket.org/register.

Originally scheduled for April, the new June dates for the spring market were announced this past December in anticipation of an improving pandemic situation, vaccine availability, and less travel restrictions, in addition to an improving supply chain situation, which has greatly impacted the industry for the past several months.

Approximately 80 Canadian companies – including casual dining powerhouse Canadel, solid wood specialist Durham and motion upholstery giant Palliser among others – have permanent showrooms scattered throughout the 180 or building that make up the market.

It should be noted it is not yet known whether the Canadian government will ease international travel rules before the spring market opens.

In a statement, the organizers also noted the spring market will usher in a return to the typical five-day schedule – from Saturday through Wednesday – for the twice-yearly furniture trade event. The 2020 fall market was expanded this past October to nine days as a safety measure, but will not be repeated.

Excepting the four additional days, the High Point Market Authority (HPMA) anticipates a return of all the safety measures put in place this past fall. The #HPMKTsafe Initiative for spring 2021 includes mandatory face coverings, reduced capacity restrictions, daily health checks, and a number of other precautions. More details about them can be found at www.highpointmarket.org/hpmktsafe.

“This pandemic has given witness to the resiliency of our industry, and we’re thrilled the resources here in High Point have been a vital lifeline in the effort to keep our industry moving forward,” HPMA president and chief executive officer Tom Conley said. “We look forward to welcoming even more industry members back to market in 2021.”

There are currently no furniture industry events scheduled in Canada. The spring edition of the Las Vegas Market is scheduled to be held in that city’s World Market Center from April 11 to 15.

Online registration for the High Point Market will remain open until June 9, but Canadian attendees are encouraged to register by May 7 so their pass can be mailed in advance. Questions can be directed to (336) 869-1000 or [email protected].

The event’s fall 2021 edition will be held from October 16 to 20.

OTTAWA – Considering most stores were closed to walk-in traffic for as long as six to eight weeks across much of the country during the second quarter, brick-and-mortar furniture stores didn’t lose all that much ground in 2020, the latest figures from Statistics Canada seem to show.

In last week’s Monthly Retail Trade Survey – which measures only location-based or brick-and-mortar retail – the national bean counter estimated actual (not seasonally adjusted) furniture store sales at a preliminary $1.15 billion for December 2020. While this was 8% lower than the $1.26 billion rung-up in November, it was a 5.9% improvement from the $1.09 billion for December 2019.

Many observers attributed the month-over-month decline to emerging supply chain issues and forecast furniture stores are likely to suffer in the first quarter of 2021 until they are resolved.

It should also be noted that while the survey doesn’t measure sales by pure-play e-commerce specialists such as Article or GoodMorning.com, it does include e-commerce sales by brick-and-mortar furniture merchants.

For the calendar year 2020, furniture store sales were estimated at $11.65 billion, down 1.7% from the $11.83 billion for 2019.

Meanwhile, sales by brick-and-mortar home furnishings stores – which sell everything from floor covering to lamps and lighting, decorative accessories and accent furniture – had preliminary and actual sales of $803.5 million in December. This was up 1.8% from November’s $745.7 million, giving further credence to the belief these merchants do a fairly brisk Holiday Season business.

It was also 15.2% higher than $697.8 million recorded for December 2019.

For the full year, home furnishing store sales were set at $6.45 billion, down 8.6% from the prior year’s $7.06 billion.

While there month-over-month sales fell in December, electronics and appliance stores performed comparatively well during the year of the pandemic. For the month, Statistics Canada pegged their actual and preliminary sales at $1.97 billion, off 2$ from the $2.0 billion for November 2019. But it was 8.4% higher than the $1.82 billion sold in December 2019.

For the year, electronic/appliance stores had total sales of $14.87 billion, up 8.3% from the $13.04 billion rung-up during 2019.

WINNIPEG – Contemporary furniture manufacturer and retailer EQ3 is expected to unveil a new flagship store here later this year when developer Cadillac Fairview completes the renovation of its Polo Park shopping centre, a number of media outlets have reported over the past few days.

EQ3 will take over the lower floor of what was most recently this city’s largest Sears Canada store which closed in December 2017, a few weeks prior to the department store chain’s complete demise the following month.

The retailer, which is owned by Palliser Furniture, currently operates an 11,000 square foot store at the corner of this city’s Portage Avenue and St. James Street. When completed later this summer, the new flagship store will occupy about 44,000 square feet, becoming the largest in the 17-store chain (12 in Canada, the rest in the U.S.)

Palliser president and chef executive officer Peter Tielmann told the Winnipeg Free Press the company has been negotiating with the developer for the past three years and, if anything, the pandemic has forced them to accelerate their plans as it has proven a boon to most home goods producers and retailers.

“Almost all our problems were good problems to have, like demand rising and causing supply issues,” he told the Free Press. “And especially if you were able to get the ball rolling quickly on your e-commerce early on, your furniture business would’ve likely been in good shape.”

Tielmann admitted Palliser’s overall shipments have sagged over the pandemic, consumer demand has risen although not from traditional brick-and-mortar sales. E-commerce revenue for EQ3 has reported climbed by as much as 150% over the course of 2020 while most of its physical stores were closed as part of ongoing public health measures.

He also said now is the right time to be thinking about the future. “What the pandemic did though is it fast-tracked everything for us,” Tielmann was quoted as saying. “We had to make some difficult decisions early in 2020 when things were locked down, but once we started to understand how this virus worked, we started moving ahead in a very positive way on some key ideas that were already being planned out.”

The new Polo Park flagship will combine the digital experience in a brick-and-mortar setting, with some concessions to post-pandemic realities. For example, EQ3 has already installed plexiglass barriers and hand-sanitizer stations “with a space just right for exact social-distancing,” according to Tielmann.

“We’re trying to do something different here that blends into a full experience for the customer –   it’ll have a café, it’ll have very integrated technology that allows you to feel products, but also large touchable screens that will allow you to visualize how they will look in your home, right there and then when you shop,” he noted.

While almost every important Canadian furniture, mattress and major appliance retailer has at least one store in Winnipeg, there are few in the Polo Park mall.

EQ3 president Mark Letain told Retail Insider the new Polo Park store will give the retailer an opportunity to spread its wings. “We decided that given where our product line is headed and where we want to go in the future with deepening into our product line and extending our product line let’s try a larger format prototype. We’ve seen that work with Restoration Hardware and folks like that. So, we decided to do it in our home city;” he told them recently.

“We really want to use this store to highlight our brand and inform people of our brand. A lot of folks don’t know we’re a made-in-Manitoba story. Some people don’t know we’re actually Canadian,” he said. “So, we really want to highlight our roots and we also want to highlight in that store this idea of buy local. Not only are we going to represent our own product line there, which is made in Winnipeg, our upholstery line, but we’re also going to feature products that are made from other local manufacturers and we’re working on that and we’re really excited about that. We also want to highlight Canadian designers.” 

Related Story: Canadian by Design brings EQ3 flagship store to New York City

Related Story: EQ3 adds U.S. stores

ABBOTSFORD, British Columbia – Specialty case goods producer CabinetBed recently announced its has added a new enhanced antimicrobial coating to the wood frame of every one of its unique Murphy beds.

In a statement, Mark Carruthers, the company’s director of international sales and marketing, said as part of an effort to offer both retailers and consumers to safest coatings available, the company is now using KCI-AMA, an antimicrobial coating made by Katilac Coatings, a Woodbridge, Ontario based firm that specialises in making coatings for a variety of applications.

Katilac noted KCI-AMA offers long-term protection against a wide range of pathogens including disease-causing germs – both bacteria and viruses – as well as mould and fungus. It is non-leaching, non-toxic and certified for use in both Canada and the United States.

‘We normally launch new products at a market, but with the borders still closed we decided to introduce two new models – the Barn and the Rustic,” Carruthers said. “With the rising costs of freight from overseas and supply chain issues, more and more retailers across North America are starting to see the value of buying Canadian-made products and not only because of the quality but because the price differences are not as great as they once were.”