LAS VEGAS – Full-line importer Porter Designs has decided not to attend Las Vegas Market due to concerns about COVID-19.
“Our customers and our employees are our priority,” said President David Weiss. “After many conversations within our company as well as taking a poll of our anticipated customer attendance, we made the difficult decision not to open our Vegas showroom.”
Instead Porter Designs will offer socially distanced, mask-required meetings in its new Portland, Ore., and High Point showrooms, as well as offering Zoom and Skype meetings for customers unable to travel.
“We’re excited to show a bunch of new samples we had hoped would make their Vegas debut,” said co-owner Julie Grant. “It’s been a crazy year, but business has been booming. We’ve been focusing on creating video presentations for our buying groups. It’s a little outside of our comfort zone, but it’s fun to use technology in exciting new ways in order to reach our customers.”
Porter’s business has accelerating due a last-minute buying trip to Asia in February.
“We were nervous as COVID began spreading in China, but we decided to travel to Vietnam, India and Malaysia to approve samples and push our production,” Weiss said.
This trip proved fortuitous as Porter now has a lot of new product to showcase as well as a robust inventory.
Porter Designs plans on attending High Point Market in October. In the meantime, customers can contact Porter Designs to schedule in-person appointments through its website.
