Lucious Lips in your Home Decor Future?

by Diane Taylor

Sunday, February 5, 2012

Visitors to the Winter Las Vegas Market came by car,
taxi and bus to the World Market Center.
Photo by Diane Taylor

The 2012 Winter Las Vegas Market welcomed 50,000 visitors last week. No, the Las Vegas Market isn’t a place for buying fresh herbs and tomatoes. These visitors were hiking from showroom to showroom in three buildings at the World Market Center. They were seeing the latest in home decor and gift items. Designers and architects came for ideas. Home decor stores came to learn trends and stock their own showrooms.

The World Market Center itself is under recent new ownership. International Market Center, L.P. are the folks who also run the High Point, NC markets. (The company is majority-owned by funds managed by Bain Capital Partners, Mitt Romney’s now famous former employer.) Markets are run in High Point, NC in April and Ocotober and in Las Vegas, in January and August.

I have attended the Las Vegas Market only once before, in August, and I did notice a much livelier market last week. The winter market, I’m told, is usually the busier of the two markets, with retail stores planning their buying for the year. The bad economy has also meant some retail stores have held back on buying for a couple years, but now the inventory is low and a pent-up demand is in play.

Helping fan the excitement of this winter show was the presence of a number of celebrities representing their own design lines or helping promote the designs of others. On hand, in addition to the traditional industry heavyweights, were Priscilla Presley, Jane Seymour, Kathy Ireland, David Bromstad and Monica Peterson.

The trend I noted for 2012 was lots of color. Perhaps that is to offset the gloom of other aspects of our lives. If indeed, folks are feeling their own need to change their home environments, bold color might be the answer.

For the accompanying video, I visited just a few of the showrooms at the market. I filmed what was of interest to me, though I am no home decor expert. Nonetheless, my short tour was great fun. How nice to tour showroom after showroom…and dream a little. (Two floors in two of the World Market Center buildings are open as the Las Vegas Design Center. These floors are open to the public all year long, so actually anyone in Las Vegas can visit…and dream.)

Are colorful lips a new trend in home decor? This painting, at the Art Trends showroom, was indeed a showstopper.
Photo by Diane Taylor

I briefly attended one seminar and heard Adi Tatarko talk about her new website called “houzz”. The website started as a tool for Tatarko and her husband to help with their search for design ideas after purchasing a home in Colorado. The crude software they originally designed was admired by friends and family and grew from there. The site now boasts the work of 49,000 professionals: architects, designers and landscape designers. The site is regularly visited by some 3 million homeowners.

The idea of the site is that if you are in the market to redecorate, you can browse thousands of photos, build your own on-line idea book, examine the work of professionals you might hire and enjoy the whole process. The category “modern kitchens”, for example, features some 7000 modern kitchen photos.

Amazing what one can see and learn at the Las Vegas Market…including how to scout a world of design ideas with the click of a mouse.

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