For the last 10 days or so, the question has been asked many times, many ways by almost everyone that I have “run into.” The question rolls out of each person’s mouth a little differently but, basically, they asked, “How’s market?”

I’ve often had the urge – when market activity starts to gain momentum the day or two before each semiannual session’s official opening, on opening day, five days after the opening day and in the days immediately following market – to respond, “Shucks, I don’t know. Nobody does.”

That, probably, is the answer closest to the truth. Like anybody else who gets to observe, and more importantly, I suppose, ask questions of those who know or could know or should know about what goes on in the some 180 showroom buildings with 12 million square feet of showroom space primarily in downtown High Point, I try to evaluate market.

Sometimes the question just rolls off the asker’s tongue (even my own) much the same way, “How are you?” or “How ya doin’?” does as you greet a passerby – those you know and those you don’t. We respond “Fine,” or “Very well,” or even “Better than I deserve.” But, with the question, some of us just can’t seem to shrug it off.

We feel obligated to stop and go through, “Traffic isn’t what it was (last time or a just few years ago) but some showrooms are doing well (meaning they’re writing orders or at least enhancing relationships) and others not so well.” If the conversation lasts more than five or six sentences, one of the parties will say that they were in the Not-So-Busy showroom building and you could have fired a cannon, a machine gun or a shotgun – depending on the size of the building cited – “and you wouldn’t have hit anyone.” A statement counter to that usually comes as another of the parties boasts about the high traffic, high interest and perhaps even high-level of purchasing going on in the So-Much-Busier showroom building. Exhibitors engage in the same conversations, usually asking each “fresh” person who arrives in their showroom, “What do you hear?” which is just one of the versions of the question.

The answer(s) to the question always depends on the persons to whom you talk about market. It seems everybody to whom you ask “How’s market?” holds a little bit, and some a whole lot, secret and/or tells you what they think you (depending on whom you are) want to hear or don’t want to hear (again depending on whom you are), often in couched language.

If there is one thing that I’ve learned well during the 40 markets that I have attended since arriving in High Point in 1990, it’s that each market is its own being, different from all the others.

One of the speakers told a story at the N.C. Furniture Export Council meeting Tuesday about baseball Hall of Famer Ty Cobb that helps me make a point about comparing one furniture market to another. Cobb had a lifetime batting average of .367, with 4,191 hits (297 of them triples), 2,245 runs scored, 12 batting titles, 23 straight seasons batting over .300 (three of them over .400 with a high of .420 in 1911). Shortly before his death in 1961, a reporter rattled off a list of top pitchers of the time (including Allie Reynolds, Vic Raschi, Ed Lopat, Whitey Ford, Warren Spahn, Lew Burdette, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Bob Lemon, Early Wynn and Billy Pierce) and asked Cobb how he would fare batting against them. Cobb replied he probably would hit .230 or .240. “Really?” the astonished reporter asked. He wondered aloud if the best pitchers of the 1950s were that much better than those against whom Cobb batted in 24 seasons during the first quarter of the 20th century. “Hey, I’m 75 years old and dying of cancer,” Cobb told the reporter.

Comparing semiannual High Point Market sessions with each other these days and especially with those of the “good ol’ days” of the 1950s, 1970s and 1990s is just as foolhardy as trying to determine theoretically how well today’s baseball players would perform if matched against those who were stars during the first half of the 20th century – in the major leagues or the Negro leagues – with all of them in their primes. It can’t be done satisfactorily, even with computers.

About the only way you truly can judge how well the market went last week is to observe home furnishings sales figures and who comes back for next spring’s and next fall’s markets. If sales increase and more people come to the spring market in a relatively good mood, then the fall 2009 market will have been a success.

tblount@hpe.com | 888-3543