Lighting Showrooms Ready for High Point Market

As more lighting retailers expand their product assortment, furniture and home décor trade events have become more important to their year-round buying schedule.   

Lighting manufacturers have been adding categories over the past several years, such as area rugs, wall art and mirrors. Now their customers are expanding their range as well, bringing in different types of products to create more of a whole-home shopping experience for consumers, builders, and designers.  

Buying accessories to visually refresh lighting vignettes is not new — however, having non-lighting merchandise sell through regularly instead of sitting on display for months is becoming more common.  And just as plumbing showrooms have diversified into lighting, the reverse is also true. Over time, many lighting retailers have added bath fittings, decorative hardware, hearth and fireplaces, kitchen appliances, permanent florals, garden statuary, gifts, outdoor entertaining, seasonal décor and other categories. It’s all part of inspiring customers who have come in for lighting to fall in love with other pieces while they are shopping.

A common statistic that used to be bandied around the lighting industry is that a homeowner will make a major lighting purchase every 10 years (some might argue it’s closer to 20). That’s a long time for a retailer to wait for a customer’s next visit and a primary reason that lighting showrooms have branched out.

Over the past decade, more lighting showroom buyers have attended the twice-yearly High Point Market, shopping for ancillary categories such as rugs, wall art, and mirrors.

“Our home décor buyer Penny Dunham will be going to High Point,” said Leslie Killingsworth, CLC, senior vice president of marketing and merchandise for Progressive and Lee Lighting’s stores in Georgia and Texas. “She will be shopping for everything under the lights — both for the add-on sales and to make our showrooms beautiful. This includes portables, art, mirrors , accents, upholstery and a selection of dining,” she said. In fact, Killingsworth noted that dining sets are becoming increasingly popular at the company’s showrooms. “We sell dining off the floor, but we do a good business with it since most of our showroom customers are building houses. They may be in the market for a new dining set because the size or use of the space in their new home may have changed and their existing set might not be a good fit — or they fall in love with a beautiful dining room set in our showroom and decide to include it with their lighting purchase. We always pick a special lighting fixture in our showroom to drop over any of the dining room sets we carry, which helps us sell both the fixture and the table.”

 Killingsworth added that art has become “an incredibly strong category” for customers. “Often they don’t know where to shop for it and have a difficult time purchasing online because they can’t gauge size or scale well. The same is true for portables. We sell a lot of lamps at all price points in our showrooms, so this is a top category for us [to look at in High Point].”

Krista Swiss, luxury brand manager for Dulles Electric Supply in the Washington, D.C. area, said, “We are looking forward to attending High Point Market this month, where we will be sourcing and refining selections for the recently launched Francis Millar catalog and website. In parallel, we are curating an intentional mix across furniture and home décor to complement the lighting collection.”

Bathroom vanities and hardware are also under consideration for expansion at Dulles Electric.

“At present, the assortment includes a refined selection of portables, mirrors, and designer wall controls with lighting remaining the foundation of the brand,” Swiss stated. “These new categories will be introduced in a phased rollout with a launch planned for later this year.”

Added Killingsworth, “The non-lighting products are a win for all showrooms — they make the showroom beautiful and customers want to image their home looking so wonderful. They are a great add-on sale, which is very meaningful in these crazy times.”