news-record.com

When it comes to furniture — and trying to deliver a knockout punch to High Point as furniture’s old-school heavyweight — Las Vegas takes it personally.

Just ask Ivan Cutler, marketing specialist, college-educated journalist, furniture industry veteran and influential blogger in the ever-present bow tie.

From his office in Greensboro, beneath a beat-up banner from the San Francisco Giants — his favorite team — Cutler had pounded away on his computer for years about the advantages of the Las Vegas Market to everybody.

Well, Cutler has changed his tune — in print, on the radio and on his blog, insidefurniture.com. He has called Las Vegas a regional market that may not have the chops to trump the semi-annual High Point Market. As he did before, he’s telling everybody. And quite frankly, Cutler has taken it on the chin. Figuratively.

"You’d better watch what you say," one of the Las Vegas market developers said.

"Regional market," another developer hissed.

Yeah, Las Vegas is feeling the heat. Literally. No thanks to Cutler.

"When you put your nose in public, you’re either going to get it powdered or punched," says Cutler, 59, speaking in his recognizable, quick-talking patter. "Now, I’m trying to make more powder."

In High Point. But not in Vegas. And it’s easy to understand why.
There’s much at stake. Reputation. Careers. And the future of a $120 billion industry, inextricably linked to North Carolina like NASCAR.

Las Vegas wants to overtake Furniture City bad. Even Sin City’s mayor has dissed High Point. He wants to lure business west and pummel High Point’s historic furniture market, a social and economic tradition since 1889.

The Summer Las Vegas Market, five days in sweltering 110-degree heat, ended nearly two weeks ago and attracted possibly 50,000 people.

Yet, there’s trouble brewing in the Nevada desert. The Las Vegas Market, with headquarters at World Market Center and entering its third year, is starting to see its initial glitzy sheen dull a bit. Complaints have come.

The airport is hard to maneuver. The shuttle isn’t effective. The hotel rooms aren’t cheap. The cab rides are expensive. Rentals are high, so high one exhibitor told Cutler, "This rent makes me puke."

Sure, the High Point Market has fewer hotel rooms: 14,000 here in the Triad, compared to Las Vegas, the Entertainment Capital of the World, with 140,000.

But High Point has 12 million square feet of exhibit space in 188 buildings, compared with the 3.8 million square feet in Las Vegas.

The World Market Center plans to expand its exhibit space to 12 million square feet by 2013. Next summer, the center is to open a third, much larger building, with 2.1 million square feet.

But if they build it, will the exhibitors come?

Meanwhile, High Point — and North Carolina — aren’t idle. This summer, legislators gave the market $3 million for transportation and marketing, and some of the region’s best business minds have come together to find ways to keep the market vital.

They should. Even with our many layoffs, a study released last month by High Point University found the furniture industry accounts for more than 65,000 jobs with a yearly economic impact of $8.5 billion.

Of course, The Comment should keep them all stoked. Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman, an ex-mob attorney, said in 2004: "If I lived in High Point, North Carolina, I’d either be committing suicide as I stand here right now, or I’d be looking for a ticket to come out here to Las Vegas."

Beautiful. Well, backatcha, Oscar.

On July 30, the first day of the Las Vegas Summer Market, Cutler dropped a bomb that caught the industry’s attention. The headline: "Marketing hype over substance."

The dispatch caused quite the ripple. One furniture manufacturer wrote: "Spot on."

Chalk it up to Cutler’s immigrant spirit. His father, a man with a seventh-grade education, immigrated from Lithuania; his mother immigrated from Canada. The youngest of four boys, Cutler learned early how to scrap.
And once again, he’s doing that now.

"I’ve gotten the arrows," he says, "but isn’t this fun?"

Contact Jeri Rowe at 373-7374 or jrowe@news-record.com