Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Fine Furniture Design Sets Scholarship Competition for HPU Design Students
September 1,
2016 by Jane Chero in Community / Charitable Support, Designer Weekly, Industry, Special Events 
Students in the Branding, Licensing and Ownership course of Victoria Brown at High Point University will soon have an opportunity to apply their talents to a furniture marketing project, courtesy of Fine Furniture Design.
The High Point-based case goods and upholstery manufacturer is sponsoring a design competition that challenges students working toward their bachelor’s degree in visual merchandising design to develop a mood board – an arrangement of images, materials and phrases used in the furniture industry to convey a concept – that communicates key consumer information related to a new collection that will be introduced at next month’s High Point Market.
“The students will create mood boards that visually represent the demographics, psychographics and overall lifestyle of consumers that would furnish their homes with the new Meritage Collection,” said Victoria Brown, assistant professor of visual merchandising design at the HPU School of Art and Design. “I am thrilled to offer this project for my students to apply their passion for design in a real world business scenario while also demonstrating the importance of brand messaging in visual merchandising.”
Brown will provide the 17 participating students with product positioning statements and sketches of the collection, and will then randomly assign each student one of three consumer profiles: Millennials, Generation X and Baby Boomers. The profiles include information such as age, income, education, occupation, shopping habits and personal pastimes.
Fine Furniture Design’s management team will select the top six mood boards that they judge as having best met the objective and will award each of those students $500 in scholarship funds to use toward their tuition.
“Our founder, Larry Moh, was committed to supporting education through his very generous involvement with scholarships,” said Eric Graham, President of Fine Furniture Design. “We’re proud to continue that tradition, particularly in support of High Point University, which is such a remarkable asset to our community.”
Moh established several scholarship funds designated for use at U.S. colleges and universities, as well as professorship chairs at Wharton and Singapore Management University. In 2001, Moh established the $3 million Celia Moh Scholarship fund, named in honor of his wife, to help students pursuing home furnishings-related college degrees. In addition, he supported the creation of the International School of Home Furnishings building at HPU.
The company will display the winning mood boards in their showroom at 305 S. Hamilton St. during the market, which takes place Oct. 22-26. The students will be invited to attend the company’s kickoff party for dealers on Oct. 21.