September 9, 2011
Doug Peppler – Vice President, Marketing, AGIO International
Given Pre-Market, what’s your forecast for this year’s Casual Show?
- “Pre-Market was on par with what we’ve seen in past years – we saw everyone we expected to see and we felt great about the meetings we had.”
- “We had meetings with a handful of Top 100 furniture stores at the show. Some of whom have been before, some who were attending for the very first time.”
- Probably just as important, were the stores beyond the Top 100 –those “101 and up.” We were really pleased to see such stores at this year’s show. And we were pleased when some of them came into the showroom unsolicited.
New introductions
- “For 2012, I think we’ve managed to hit our sweet spot once again – those value priced collections that offer great retail price points. That’s where Agio lives.”
- “At Pre-Market we didn’t show as many new collections as we have in past years. However, I think the half-dozen or so new designs we showed were received very, very well.”
- “Of those new collections debuted at the Pre-Market, Balmoral and Classique were probably the two sets that received the most buzz. Like our other big producers recently, Balmoral and Classique are big collections with lots of pieces in them. I’m looking forward to hearing the feedback from the rest of the industry at the Causal Show.”
The Market in General
- “My impression of this year’s market conditions was that people experienced a slow start but eventually found that demand at least kept pace with 2010. Consumers weren’t in a hurry, but they were out there. My feeling is that most people are going to be satisfied with being flat against last year’s numbers.”
- “The good news for Agio and our retailers is that our value price point collections are usually the first off the floor and the first out of the warehouse, so there isn’t a lot of Agio inventory out there.”
In general, we’re bullish on this year’s Causal Market. We are very optimistic about going into next year.