Daily News
From Home Furnishing Business
Tupelo Furniture Market Hosts First Show Since 2020
February 14,
2022 by Laurie Northington in Business Strategy, Industry 
For the first time since 2020, the Tupelo Furniture Market is hosting an industry trade show. The Winter Market will be an abbreviated one, running Feb. 16 – 18, according to a report from The Daily Journal.
"We're getting back to the basics," said V.M. Cleveland, chairman of TFM. "We're not going to have the awards ceremonies or the free buffets or entertainment or anything like that. We're just going to match up the vendors with the buyers and retailers and just do business like the way we started 35 years ago."
The market's last trade show was the summer market of 2020. It skipped all of last year over concerns with the pandemic, although High Point and Las Vegas had their markets. Cleveland said Tupelo wasn't in a position to host a market.
"We really didn't want people from 40-50 states exposed to COVID or bringing COVID here to us," he said. "But the industry itself was part of the reason, because the delivery times for a lot of manufacturers went from 30 days to 60 days to 90 days to six months or more."
The slow delivery times made hosting a market with something new to show difficult. Supply chain disruptions did cause some manufacturers to push back delivery schedules. That affected smaller companies the most — the ones that most often show in Tupelo.
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