Thursday, October 20, 2011

Antique & Design Center at Market Square Seminar Schedule


World-Class Speakers Begin Taking Stage Saturday Morning!

Have you heard about the special seminar series taking place here at the High Point Market in the Antique & Design Center at Market Square? Each of the world-class speakers is considered a rock star in his or her chosen field and you can expect each session is a learning experience par excellence!

All seminars take place in the Mezzanine Level Seminar Space in the Antique & Design Center in historic Market Square. No reservations are necessary, and thanks to the sponsorship of VandM.com, the entire series is free to all attending Market!

The series kicks off Saturday morning, October 22 at 10 a.m. with social media practitioner Leslie Carothers and a special breakfast presentation called “Breakfast in Bed with Leslie: Waking Up to the Power of Social Media.” Billed as a rousing wake-up call on social media metrics, the presentation is sponsored by Pandora de Balthazar, the premier worldwide collector and purveyor of classic antique textiles, who is exhibiting at the Antique & Design Center for the first time this Market.

Carothers will tackle the one topic on the minds of designers, retailers and manufacturers everywhere. Namely, how do you measure the return on investment (ROI) of social media? Does it really work to get new sales? Secure new clients? Attract media attention? If you’d like to get your social media strategy on track and jump-start your Market faster than a double-shot of espresso, plan to start your Opening Day with us at the Antique & Design Center.
 
Next up on Saturday at 2 p.m. is Chicago Interior Designer Julia Buckingham Edelmann, principal of Buckingham Interiors & Design LLC, who presents “Modern-ique: Integrating Antiques and Artifacts with Modern Design for Today’s Lifestyles.” With a reputation for mixing styles and eras to create surprising, whimsical and unique environments, and an educated eye for only the best and most unique pieces, Edelmann sees aged objects as modern art.

Regular readers of the AD&C blog know both Pandora de Balthazar and Julia Buckingham Edelmann have been the subjects of recent blog profiles here. We’re looking forward to finally meeting these talented and inspiring women in person.

Sunday, October 23, 2 p.m. features an encore performance by Bill Indursky, co-founder of VandM.com. If you caught his talk at Spring Market earlier this year, you know his provocative trend presentation simply blew everyone away. If you haven’t heard him, this is your big chance. Bill is returning for Yearbook 2011/2012: Trend Forecast for the Antique and Home Décor Industries. It’s a not-to-be-missed, in-depth and up-to-the-minute analysis of where the antique and home décor industries are headed. We can tell you from experience that he provides a fact-based forecast that is thought-provoking and lively. If it’s been awhile since your last ‘aha’ moment, you owe it to yourself (and your business!) to attend this session.

Retail Sherpa, stylist, designer and entrepreneur Suzi West follows at 3:30 on Sunday with Passion and the Six P’s of Successful Retailing. West has more than 17 years of retail experience in merchandising, marketing and managing with brands like Express, Aeropostale, NBC, Homage, Limited Brands and DSW. The force behind Collier West, with its unique mix of vintage and antique furniture, home furnishings and décor, she is a passionate leader with a record of building brands and environments that turn ideas into profitability. With a focus on the Six P’s of marketing fundamentals, this session is appropriate for both the small business leader and large organization, and breaks each practice into understandable and executable steps. Count on her to reawaken the merchant within.  

Following Suzi West, we’re looking forward to the big panel discussion led by our own Karen Luisana, executive director and founder of the Antique & Design Center at Market Square. Karen is set to wrap up Sunday’s offering at 5 p.m., with “You Don’t Smell Potpourri in Here: Reinventing the Antiques Business.” Her panelists include Hilary Eklund, Tandem Antiques; Breck Armstrong, Moss Studio; Barry Cotton, Barry Cotton Antiques and Blogger Allison Watts, the force behind the popular blog heirloomphilosophy.blogspot.com.

“Our panel of experts will provide an insider’s take on the evolution and revolution underway in today’s antiques business,” Karen says. “If ever there was a time to be dealing in antiques, this is it. People are tiring of disposable, mass-produced goods that don’t last. Everywhere we look, we see that consumers are craving furnishings of real quality. More and more want to invest in pieces with a story behind them that will continue to increase in value over time, and they are gravitating toward the sustainable nature of antiques as well. If you think this is your grandmother’s business, these panelists are gunning to change your mind.”

Monday, October 24 at 2 p.m. brings another popular speaker back to the series with David Lindquist and “Understanding the Value of Antiques in Today’s Market.” With slides and actual objects drawn from the floor the Antique & Design Center, the presentation will prepare participants to speak intelligently about what is currently happening in the world of antiques, “particularly the astonishing decline of antique prices, which is bringing antiques into sharp competition with modern reproductions and fine modern furniture,” Lindquist says.

Breck Armstrong, principal of Moss Studios takes the podium at 3:30 on Monday for “Found Objects Repurposed for Modern Home Décor.” Armstrong left his job in Chicago, working with antiques and salvage, for the space and serenity of a farm in Michigan. With this experience, combined with his background in ceramics and nine years with the Brookfield Zoo creating exhibits, he decided to start his own business. Since then, with a unique and ever-changing collection of industrial salvage, he has gained a reputation for creating industrial modern furniture and home accessories and his ‘objects with stories’ are featured in an enviable list of the country’s leading-edge home and style retailers.

Finally, Clayton Oxford, principal of Clayton Oxford Designs, will wrap up the series for us on Tuesday, October 25 at 2 p.m. with “Entrepreneurship & Design: The Benefits of Local Sourcing.” A designer and entrepreneur, Clayton Oxford believes that when designers design from their local resources, furniture will be made in the U.S. again.  As he says, “Design used to be driven by quantity, but now more than ever, design has to be driven by quality and value.” To which we say, “Hear! Hear!”

Clayton will be discussing the anomaly of the small business importer and his switch to domestic production. We encourage everyone to come learn how a new sense of design guided by entrepreneurship and local materials will lead furniture production into the future. We promise you’ll gain inspiration from Oxford’s tenacious and naive endeavors to take on the archetype of today’s furniture company.

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Prepare To Be Floored


Character Unlimited is Coming to High Point Market
When designers, builders and architects walk through the doors of Character Unlimited in Hudson, N.Y. for the first time--a city well known for its active arts scene and enclave of antique dealers--the reaction is almost always the same. Taking in the natural beauty of the time-weathered materials and handcrafted custom furniture, they turn to designer Micah Geraghty and say, “Where…have…you…been?”   

We expect the responses to be just as awed and enthusiastic when buyers and designers discover Character Unlimited here in High Point, exhibiting for the first time ever at the Fall 2011 Market.

To be sure, Geraghty is coming to the Antique & Design Center at Market Square with an offering of products not typically found in High Point. That’s because along with his custom furniture designs crafted by hand from pristine reclaimed materials, Character Unlimited will also be showcasing samples of the reclaimed materials the firm uses to design, build and install everything from interior wall panels to ceilings, flooring and entire homes.

Among notable projects, Character Unlimited recently supplied much of the eco-friendly building materials for the remodel of a massive home in Bedford, N.Y., that became the subject of a coffee-table book called Kennedy Green House. Written by Robin Wilson, the book documents the renovation of the home into a green domicile by its owner, Robert Kennedy, Jr. (Yes, that Robert Kennedy, Jr.).

The seeds of Geraghty’s passion for organic materials and building were planted early, as a young boy working in his father’s construction business. They grew over time into a unique ability to see beauty in what others disregard or deem useless. “It really stems from growing up as our country did originally,” he describes. “Out of necessity, people used the items they had for a longer period of time, rather than throwing everything away and making something new.”

The young man’s affinity for building and natural materials led him to launch his own restoration company at the age of 18.  “I would go out with a small truck and source the reclaimed products for our projects myself,” he remembers. “Then, in 2005, I purchased a huge flooring operation. We would take raw material and field dress it off the buildings, and each lot of material our customers purchased was documented with photos of the structures.”

And what buildings! Early Americans built homes, barns and out-buildings with no power tools, electricity or fuel and Geraghty searches far and near to preserve and recycle the wood, metal and stone they yield. He and his team cull everything from hand-hewn frames to vintage wood wide-plank flooring, to weathered siding, windows, doors and cupolas from the old structures.

“Character Unlimited is a family-run business and we pride ourselves on the fact that we don’t sell anything that we don’t fabricate, and that every piece of wood we use is reclaimed by us.” Most recently, they netted the wide-plank cherry that comprised the Van Vechten Family Grist Mill which was built in upstate New York circa 1650. “We’re talking about pieces of wood that are wide enough and long enough to have been standing timbers in the 1500’s,” Geraghty points out.

To use beautiful woods saturated with natural character, and marked by unique tones and grain textures solely for flooring seemed a shame, so Geraghty moved beyond flooring to focus on turning the materials into the tables, chairs, cabinets purveyed today at Character Unlimited. “I wanted to move beyond simply supplying the material into the art form, and the feelings they create when somebody looks at them and owns them.”
Written By Kimberley Wray
Photos Courtesy of Character Unlimited LLC

Monday, October 17, 2011

Exhibitor Resource: Antique & Design Center at Market Square


High Point Market exhibitors looking for the perfect finishing touches to complete their showroom displays this week should check out the Antique & Design Center in historic Market Square. An ideal resource for exhibitors and showroom designers, the Antique & Design Center opens to the trade on Thursday, October 20th at noon.
Housed in what was once a turn-of-the-century furniture factory, the Antique & Design Center has quickly become a favorite venue of the world's savviest retailers and designers. Exhibitors will find nearly 80 hand-picked dealers and artisans offering exquisite antiques, original works of art, and one-of-a-kind finds to set their showrooms apart.

The Antique & Design Center is located on the Ground and Mezzanine levels of historic Market Square, just beyond the Suites and Salon. Free parking is available on Tomlinson St. The venue will remain open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Friday, October 21, and through Market Week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. The Antique & Design Center closes on Thursday, October 27th, at noon.

Clayton Oxford Comes Home


The majority of home furnishings manufacturers these days will tell you they were “forced” to produce overseas. Clayton Oxford, chief executive officer and founder of Durham, N.C.-based Clayton Oxford Designs, will tell you that he was forced to move production back to North Carolina.

As much as he enjoys international travel, Clayton Oxford has a thing about control, particularly when it comes to the supply chain and production of his distinctive, eco-friendly home furnishings and accessories. He also likes to be able to tell his customers--interior designers and retailers--that he can actually deliver their orders in two to three weeks.

While others bemoan the current state of the U.S. furniture industry, and the impact that the loss of manufacturing jobs has had on the country, Oxford believes that when designers create products using local resources, furniture will be made in the U.S. again. “Design used to be driven by quantity, but now more than ever, design has to be driven by quality and value,” he says. “It’s not about what we can’t make in the U.S., but what we can.”

Oxford will share his thought-provoking perspective, Tuesday, October 25, from 2 p.m. to 3:15 p.m. in the Mezzanine Level Seminar Space, during “Entrepreneurship & Design: The Benefits of Local Sourcing,” an Antique & Design Center at Market Square seminar, sponsored by VandM.com.

A native of Winston-Salem, N.C., Oxford decided to pursue his career in home furnishings design following film school, where he majored in art direction and production design. “I realized I didn’t want to make props for movies,” he says. “It was fun, but we spent so much time building these great things and then we’d just tear them down after the shoot.”

Knowing he wanted to make things of lasting value, the designer set out to import “truly unique products that had not been on the market before.” And he was successful at it--shipping many containers stateside over the years.

“It’s not that I didn’t want to go that way,” Oxford says, recalling the early days spent knocking on factory doors in the Phillipines with a backpack and a plan to create a company. It’s just that as the company grew, he grew frustrated by the excessive lead times, delays and headaches inherent in the process of manufacturing overseas.

This week, Oxford will bring some 70 new, modern rustic designs to the High Point Market that were produced in North Carolina using native solid woods like American black walnut, cherry, magnolia and maple and reclaimed barn wood. Most is sourced within a 20-mile radius of where the furnishings are manufactured in Durham. As part of the “Natural Slice” collection, Oxford also repurposes materials like slabs of river-recovered cypress wood estimated to be between 1500 and 2000 years old. Hence the company’s apt tagline: “Designed by Nature, Crafted by Hand.”

While Oxford does continue to import some raw stock in species like acacia, teak, rosewood and cocobolo, the member of the Sustainable Furnishings Council notes that anything he imports is FSC certified. “It’s all wood that has naturally fallen down or was taken down in a sustainable way,” he relates.

Honing the production process and sorting out the supply chain may have involved a long and circuitous journey, but the entrepreneur is pleased with the results and eager to share what he’s learned in taking on the archetype of today’s furniture company.

Indeed, he says, “We’re at the point now where we are actually the company we’ve wanted to be for years, and we’ve created five or six new jobs in the past couple of months in order to keep up with the demand from customers who want quality, American-made products. And, we’re doing it competitively.”

By Kimberley Wray
Photos courtesy of Clayton Oxford




Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Mac is Back in Town


Mclean Lighting Works Returns to the High Point Market
Interior Featuring McLean Lighting Works

For antique lighting cognoscente, designers in the know, and all those who appreciate quality lighting products produced in the U.S., there is reason to rejoice. After a long hiatus, McLean Lighting Works is returning to the High Point Market. You heard it here first: Mac Moore and company are back in town!

Actually, Moore was really never too far away. McLean Lighting Works, manufacturers of fine interior and exterior antique reproductions and custom lighting, is after all, based just down the road in Greensboro, N.C. But it’s been some years since the firm exhibited its antique reproduction lighting--ranging from exterior and interior hanging and wall-mount fixtures to chandeliers, sconces and lamps recreated in brass, copper and tin with hand-rubbed patina finishes--in Market Square, and later in the IHFC.
Tools of the trade.

“The Internet changed the world, and it eventually changed the way we operated at McLean Lighting Works,” Moore says. “But by relying solely on the Internet, over time we lost one of the things that I like most about this business, and that is the face-to-face contact with customers. Regardless of how good your website is, you can’t replace that.”
Mac Moore
 At the same time, Moore was ready to launch another facet of McLean Works: antique lighting. “We have loved and collected antiques for years and when we saw the new Antique & Design Center at Market Square, we knew we’d found the perfect venue to bring them to Market,” Moore relates. “We’re very excited about connecting personally with buyers and designers again and to being a viable source for antique lighting.”

Buyers and designers on the hunt this season will note a great number of vintage lights on display in the McLean Lighting Works space, some from now defunct (and coveted) Virginia Metalcrafters. There will also be antique street lights in the space from England and France, as well as a street light from Boston signed by its maker with most of the original glass intact. Oh, and coach lights, lots of coach lights, all restored by hand in the McLean Lighting Works workshop, by people dedicated to their craft, using the same methods and techniques that were used to create the pieces originally.

“We operate a hands-on business,” Moore says. “The people that we employ are very smart and highly educated and like to work with their hands. It’s somewhere between craft and manufacturing. We don’t mass-produce anything, but we make a lot of things.”
Indeed, McLean Lighting Works is responsible for restoring or duplicating many period lights throughout the State, including a large, three-tier chandelier in the library of Bennett College and the chapel lanterns of Wesley Memorial Church here in High Point.  The firm was also the primary supplier of all the authentic lighting used in the movie The Patriot, starring Mel Gibson.

If Americana is beginning to sound like a theme here, it’s because McLean Lighting Works was originally launched as a supplier to The Saltbox, a retail establishment operated by Moore’s wife, Nancy, in the State Street Station area of Greensboro that specializes in American-made folk art, pottery and paintings, as well as one-of-a-kind handcrafted art and antiques.

“We’ve always collected American,” Moore says, adding that in addition to antique lighting, there will be a goodly selection of American antique and vintage furnishings for buyers to peruse in the space this Market. Welcome back Mac!
Honey guards the shop.

Written by Kimberley Wray. 1st 2 photos courtesy of McLean Lighting other Photography by Amanda Lane Kinney.