High Point Furniture Market - North Carolina, Oct 2009

I've wanted to attend the semi annual High Point Furniture Market in North Carolina ever since hearing my interior design teachers talk about it in school.  I finally made it this past October.  I went to the show as a member of the Press which had some limits in terms of getting in to some of the showrooms and being able to see wholesale pricing, but for my purposes, I was able to see quite a bit in one long day, I met some great people, and I left with a handy show directory that indicates which companies have green products.  I also got to hand out some of my snazzy new EMS business cards for the first time!

Here were some of the highlights of the show for me:

environment:

environment - Laurel DresserThe first "e" in environment is backwards in their logo, but of course I don't have that option on my keyboard.  I recognized the name and furniture at the environment booth from the ads of a local Portland store called EWF Modern that carries their products, so I was excited to talk to them.  Most of their furniture is bold & heavy in appearance, often made with a variety of natural woods pieced together and paired with black or glass. 

Most of the wood is sourced from reclaimed resources in Brazil.  A few other furniture companies I had spoken to were also importing wood from Brazil, so I asked why they weren't using locally sourced wood.  environment has environment - Gavia Buffetactually done detailed studies on the emissions from shipping their goods to the U.S. vs. having them made here and found that they have a smaller carbon footprint shipping many items on a container ship close to their intended destinations than they would if they made everything in one place in the U.S. and then trucked a handful of pieces at a time all over the country.

I also have to give environment the prize for the best handout of the show - a nice little 8GB USB drive.

....more to come!