Spilling The Social Tea

There are two kinds of people at High Point Market - the ones carrying blister bandaids…and the ones desperately asking around for blister bandaids by day three.

One of the things I notice every season is how much pressure brands, designers, and reps put on real-time posting during market itself. There’s this feeling that every beautiful moment has to be uploaded immediately or it somehow loses value. The truth is, your audience isn’t only paying attention during those four days in High Point.

High Point Market moves fast. Faster than many first-time attendees expect. By the end of the week, the days blur together, showrooms start running into each other, you forget where you saw that one piece you loved, your feet hurt and somehow your phone storage is suddenly full of blurry product photos, accidental videos of the floor, and seventeen versions of the same chandelier from slightly different angles.

Every Market, I see brands pouring enormous amounts of time, energy, and money into creating beautiful showroom experiences only to completely miss the opportunity to maximize the content afterward.

One of the biggest things I’ve learned is that the brands, reps, and designers who experience the most successful Markets usually aren’t the ones trying to do the most. They’re the ones who prepare intentionally.

One of the questions I get asked by almost every new client is “Which social media platform should we focus on?” While, my answer isn’t a one size fits all, I can absolutely tell you the answer is never, “You need to be everywhere.” Because not every platform serves the same purpose and not every audience behaves the same way.

Somewhere along the way, a lot of luxury brands started confusing professionalism with emotional distance. Everything became perfectly polished, carefully curated, visually refined, and aesthetically beautiful. And while there’s absolutely value in elevated branding, I think many luxury brands, especially in the furniture industry, have unintentionally removed the very thing that makes people connect with them in the first place - personality.

Every few months, someone declares email marketing dead and yet somehow, every single day, people still check their inboxes and search old emails for information they actually need. So no, I don’t think email marketing is dead. I think a lot of bad email marketing is finally getting ignored.

At some point, almost every conversation about social media eventually circles back to the algorithm. “The algorithm killed our engagement.” “The algorithm isn’t showing our posts.” “The algorithm changed again.” While algorithms absolutely impact performance, I honestly don’t think they’re the biggest reason many furniture brands struggle on social media. In many cases, the problem isn’t visibility, it’s strategy.

I want to start this by saying something that may surprise people coming from someone who works professionally in branding, marketing, and graphic design every day…I actually like Canva. But somewhere along the way, I think a lot of businesses started confusing having access to design tools with having a marketing strategy. And those are two very different things.