High Point Market: A ‘business-as-usual’ market in an unusual time

New products were on full display, front and center in showrooms. Milestone anniversaries and other celebratory occasions were toasted. Industry experts sat on panels to discuss design and retail matters.

If the foot traffic seemed a little lighter (it is too early for an official count), the buyers who came to High Point Market were intentional in their shopping. And despite the looming specter of difficult-to-swallow tariffs, this week’s market did not appear dramatically different from past markets.

Retailer Vicki Rulli, who with her husband Tom Heaphey owns the art resource Itinerant Studio and operates Duo Home, a décor store in Springfield, Ohio, observed that the market may have seemed slower than usual with regard to foot traffic, but it had a certain busyness and purposefulness about it. “We felt there was more energy here than at the last market [in October],” she said. “People may be buying before things get worse.”

“I’m not sure how that plays out in the end,” she added, but she speculated that perhaps people have already adapted to political and economic chaos as a new normal and are carrying on and doing what they need to do to run their business.

Vendors reported a similar experience.

“It’s been business as usual, which is shocking to us,” said JoAnn Hollingsworth, co-owner of The Natural Light. She said she came to market anticipating at least some economic anxiety but found little. As a domestic manufacturer with tariffs on only a few component pieces, she acknowledged that increased tariffs will have less of an impact on her lighting business than on some of her competitors. “We told our salespeople, ‘We know it’s not going to get cheaper,’” meaning that this market has been an opportunistic one.

“When everything shakes out, maybe there will be a difference, but so far there has been no difference” in market shopping behavior, she said.

“We’re business as usual,” said Riki Lent, senior vice president at Kalco Lighting, which manufactures in China but also elsewhere. “We’re here to serve the design community with good designs and trendy products.”

As for tariffs, Kalco’s current inventory levels are good, Lent said, and the company is “sitting tight.”

“We haven’t halted production. We own our own factories, so if we only want to bring in what we need, we will. “We are not afraid.”

Schonbek and Modern Forms, two lighting brands that are part of WAC Group, opened a new showroom in IHFC (and Quorum Lighting made its High Point debut in Schonbek’s former space in the Suites at Market Square).

WAC President Becky Li said she found the market-goers “very cautious but very curious” — curious, she assumed, about her company’s new showroom and what its investment means for business. The goal of the new showroom is to build brand recognition in High Point, meet with brand reps, and share detailed product information with current customers and potential new ones, Li said.

Schonbek manufactures its crystal chandeliers and sconces in its factory in Plattsburgh, N.Y., but Modern Forms manufactures its ceiling fans and other lighting pieces overseas. WAC Group just celebrated the third anniversary of the factory it owns in Thailand, but some components for Modern Forms are made in China, which at this writing, is still facing a steep 145% tariff.

Li said she is raising prices a uniform 15% across WAC’s multiple lighting brands, except for Schonbek, whose prices will go up about 5% to cover crystals and glass sourced in Europe. Newer inventory has come in at a higher tariff, but WAC hasn’t raised prices accordingly, Li said. “You can’t because you don’t know what Trump is going to do,” she said.

Looking ahead, Li said she is not halting product development due to tariff concerns, but she does anticipate delays in getting needed materials. “My engineering resources are stretched very thin,” she said. A lot of design work is done in California, “but the execution is a little painful for me,” Li acknowledged. She estimated that her product development timeline is about three weeks behind.

But she was upbeat and cheerful. “I think you have to try to do different things, bold things. And not be afraid to test the market.”

“I think people in this industry want to be optimistic,” Rulli said.