A luncheon seminar sponsored by The Interior Design Society was one of the highlights of my trip to High Point. I really love it when I’m asked to speak, and if my schedule is free, I accent any invitation that I can. Faye Laverty, association director for The Interior Design Society, has been asking me for years, so we are old friends by now.
With 91 people registered for lunch and 25 more in the meal-free seats, we knew we would have a full room. When another 25 or so people showed up at the door I was happy when all of them could be accommodated as well.
I often make presentations in High Point. It’s not unusual for some organization or the other to ask me to speak every six months. Sometimes I can go a year without giving a talk; other years I have two scheduled during the same market. It’s flattering that there are people who have been coming to my Furniture Market talks for years. I like it when new people attend, too.
Especially during a market, when time is so precious, I feel a great responsibility to give people good, usable information and forecasts. I had already finished my talk and the PowerPoint presentation done a week before the trip, but I decided that something that felt fresh and up-to-the-minute would be better. That’s why I was busy writing and reworking my presentation until late on Saturday night.
The seminar was titled New Times, New Trends: A Dozen Décor Directions for 2006 – 2007™. It was as well received as any seminar I have ever done. In fact, people liked it so much that—like my last talk at the Furniture Market in October of 2004—they asked to buy it. Some of them even pre-ordered it from Cathy DeBono (she runs the office and organizes much of my work life so well) and Laura Colón (my assistant of five years and the force behind The Trend Curve Colors™ KIDS), who were busy selling our color forecasts, trend forecasts and trend reports to the swarm of people who wanted to buy them after the seminar.
We will release New Times, New Trends as a CD-ROM based product as quickly as possible. I will be polishing the content this week and send it for layout soon after. Our target release date is April 30. Let Cathy know if you want to pre-order New Times, New Trends. As always, subscribers to The Trend Curve™ will have their orders shipping first.