San Francisco Mart Falls Victim to World Market Ce
San Francisco, CA, February 1, 2006--The World Market Center's debut has delivered a one-two punch that has all but KO'd the 90-year-old San Francisco Mart furniture show, whose organizers have now turned it into a show for gift exhibitors, according to Business Press.
"We did experience a loss of exhibitors and national retailers," San Francisco Mart spokesperson Ellen Hall said of the Las Vegas Market's impact. "We have refocused on Western independent dealers -- the moms and pops. The exhibition showing in San Francisco has a distinct West Coast style of design professionals. If we sent out direct mailing pieces nationally before, now we channel our resources into the smaller western stores."
In August, the market moved its dates to coincide with the Feb. 2-5 San Francisco International Gift Fair, which brings in 30,000 attendees, according to the San Francisco Convention and Visitors Bureau. The San Francisco Mart attracted between 12,000 and 15,000 attendees, according to the bureau, although market organizers put that number at "several thousand." The Convention and Visitors Bureau estimates that the August furniture market brought in $5 million to the city's coffers and is expected to do the same in February.
The main entrance inside the San Francisco Mart wasn't packed with people for the August furniture show.
Despite the numbers, the mart has struggled. In August 2004, a year before the Las Vegas Market opened, news accounts in San Francisco had as much as 25 percent of the local market's tenants signing with the Las Vegas show. Today, many familiar with the Bay Area show say the floor has received a total makeover.
The winter San Francisco show is set to have 100 exhibitors and 300,000 to 500,000 square feet of exhibit space. By comparison, the Las Vegas Market has 1,100 exhibitors and 2.3 million square feet of exhibit space. Las Vegas Market organizers are predicting a repeat of last July's 62,000 attendees.
R.C. Willey President Jeff Child was among the many who has not returned to San Francisco after the Las Vegas Market debuted in July. "We used to go to San Francisco, but there are very few furniture people going there now. It is over as a furniture show."
The woes of the San Francisco market can't be wholly placed on Las Vegas, according to former exhibitors. "When we started working with the World Market, we pulled out of San Francisco (because) they were raising our rates," said John Sandberg, the president and CEO of Los Angeles-based Sandberg Furniture. The company had been exhibiting in San Francisco for more than 60 years. "If the Las Vegas market hadn't come, we probably would have stayed in San Francisco for lack of a better choice."
The San Francisco Mart is looking toward the future now as exhibitors like Sandberg and Broyhill have left for the green pastures of the World Market Center.
