NEW YORK–The highly fluid scheduling of home-textiles markets has taken yet another direction.
Yesterday, the Home Fashion Products Association announced that the dates for the New York Home Fashions Market, the showroom portion of home-textiles market week, will move yet again. The fall version of the market is now slated to take place from Monday, Sept. 15, to Friday, Sept. 19. In spring 2009, the New York Home Fashions Market is now scheduled from Monday, March 9, to Friday, March 13; in fall of next year, it will take place from Monday, Sept. 14, to Friday, Sept. 18.
Previous early-year markets have taken place in February, March, April and May. In years past, fall markets have occurred in August, September, October and November.
Speaking with HFN this morning, Barry Leonard, the HFPA’s president and president and chief executive officer of Ex-Cell Home Fashions and Glenoit, said the new dates were the result of discussions and polling of HFPA member manufacturers, non-members and retailers. “These dates give us time to both fill our retailers’ set orders and have good weather for the market,” Leonard said. “Summer vacations should be over by the middle of September, and we have avoided the religious holidays. The March dates might conflict with college spring breaks, but we wanted to avoid St. Patrick’s Day and all the congestion in New York at that time.”
The new schedule separates the New York Home Textiles Market show, owned and managed by George Little Management, and the New York Home Fashions Market by about one month. Leonard said GLM was “very involved” in the discussion about the market-week schedule. He also said the HFPA will work to bring the GLM show closer to market week.
In a GLM statement issued this morning, Penny Sikalis, vice president for global development, said, “We are disappointed that HFPA members and constituents have chosen to shift their market dates to yet another new time frame, despite the ongoing communications that we have had with them. Based on the tremendous success of the just-concluded home textiles market week at the New York International Gift Fair, we will continue to produce a luxury home-textiles market in both January and August. We also will continue to work with HFPA toward unified markets in the future.”
As the dates stand now, New York Home Textiles Market Week this summer is slated for from Aug. 14 to Aug. 21. Early in 2009, the GLM show is scheduled for Jan. 22 to Jan. 29. This show runs concurrently with GLM’s New York International Gift Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Center, the Metropolitan Pavilion and the Passenger Ship Terminal Piers, as well as at two showroom buildings, 230 Fifth Ave. and 7 W New York.
In the discussions about the new dates, Leonard added that some in the industry favored April and October market weeks, while others liked the current setup of February and August market weeks. “Only after a lot of discussion did we pull these dates together,” he said. “You’ll never pull absolutely everybody in on this process, but I think we now have good dates.”
“Our goal is to get [GLM] back to having the show Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday leading into market week,” Leonard said. “It’s a matter of us both wanting to work together.”
Leonard also said the association will review these new dates with manufacturers and retailers after the fall 2009 market week. “We have left the door open to revisit this if these dates don’t work,” he said.