(Editor: Leona) The Tupelo Furniture Market reported that with the housing market stabilizing and the economy slowly strengthening, selling exhibit space at one of the nation’s leading B2B furniture trade events has become a bit easier. However, it remains a challenge, as many geographical regions throughout the United States are still recovering from the housing market collapse. Debbie Henry, sales director for the Tupelo Furniture Market—which will produce its 56th furniture trade event on February 5-8, 2015—explained that the furniture business’s success goes “hand-in-glove” with the housing market. “Most people don’t really consider the fact that the furniture industry is directly linked to the success or failure of the housing market,” said Henry. “If houses are not selling, people are not buying furniture. When consumers are not buying, our business feels the impact.”

Over the last three year’s, even with the economy’s troubles, the Tupelo Furniture Market has managed to attracted more than 200 new companies to its event. According to Henry, this can be attributed to a number of facts, including the development of comprehensive marketing packages to attract new exhibiting businesses, as well as expanding buyer/attendee recruitment efforts to ensure that existing or current companies exhibiting will have more successful events.

“We completely changed our approach to selling exhibit space,” explained Henry. “We began selling our new exhibitors a package of benefits that include built-in marketing tactics that cultivate and attract new buyers to our event, and specifically to their exhibit space locations. Now when we talk to prospects, our time is not spent merely on exhibit space location and traffic patterns. We allocate much more time to determining who their target buyers are and explaining the tools we can collectively utilize to be sure they show up during our show. Our relationship with our exhibiting companies is now much more of an on-going marketing partnership!”

The marketing tactics employed by the Tupelo Furniture Market range from traditional to progressive, including direct mail, telemarketing, print and online advertising, e-marketing, web targeting/re-targeting and geo-fencing, to name a few. Some may be considered extreme, but collectively the marketing mix is having a positive effect.

According to Kevin J. Seddon, president of the Tupelo Furniture Market, incentives utilized to attract furniture store owners may include discounts on product purchased by the retailers on-site, shipping and financing incentives, partial truck load purchases for smaller retailers, or meal, travel and hotel vouchers. “It depends on what the exhibitor and the market can do and what they believe the targeted buyer needs,” Seddon said.

The 2.5 million square feet of space for the upcoming Tupelo Market is almost completely sold out for the spring, February 5-8, 2015 event.