AmericasMart Fall Design Week Offers Gift and Home Expertise

Designers and retailers gathering in Atlanta for AmericasMart’s® third annual Fall Design Week featuring Gift and Home, September 24 – 28, 2018, will discover select trend-driven showrooms plus educational seminars, networking opportunities and more—all orchestrated to help advance their businesses and brands.

The 2018 lineup brings gift and home together to give buyers another opportunity to explore products and trends introduced over the summer with merchandise showcased in AmericasMart’s Open Year Round showrooms plus more than 100 additional showrooms across the home, gift, holiday and rug collections. Celebrity designer Vern Yip headlines three days of top educational programming presented by tastemakers and thought leaders from across the design, lifestyle, legal and publishing realms.

“Fall Design Week is an important extension of our daily design business at AmericasMart for local and regional interior designers,” says Jenny Heinzen York, Vice President of Home for AmericasMart. “On the retail side, as store sales are tracking up for the year and a robust holiday selling season lies ahead, retailers across categories are encouraged use this week to make last-minute additions to their store floors.”

The Market also caters to buyers in the event planning, film, staging, architecture, landscaping, and hospitality industries.

Fall Design Week’s signature educational programming—presented Tuesday, September 25 through Thursday, September 27—prepares buyers and designers for the upcoming season. All Fall Design Week seminars garner a 0.1 CEU credit.

Interior designers Rhonda Peterson, Patricia McLean and Howard Wiggins share their tips, tricks and traditions for celebrating the season in style in a breakfast seminar “Designing & Entertaining for the Holidays” moderated by Elizabeth Ralls, Editor-in-Chief of Atlanta Homes & Lifestyles on Tuesday, September 25. Yip shares his journey on breaking into television (and how he really works with those tiny budgets!), advice on building a sustainable interior design practice and his own inspirational design philosophy in a lunch and learn later that day.

Attorney Angie Avard Turner starts the day on Wednesday, September 26 with “A Legal Crash Course for Creatives: What You Need to Know to Run & Protect Your Business” breakfast seminar, followed by a lunch and learn featuring Lauren Kay, Deputy Editor for “The Knot,” sharing highlights from “The Knot’s Annual Trend Report.”

The Fall Design Week programming continues Thursday, September 27, starting with breakfast and Christopher Grubb explaining how today’s industry professionals should build mutually beneficial long-term relationships to implement an unforgettable design experience for the client in “Designers, Contractors, & Architects: Creating Relationships & Partnerships for Referrals & Business Success.” Later over lunch, highly successful designers and business women Sandra Funk, Shayla Copas and Lisa Mende discuss their journeys to interior design, including what to expect when starting a business, how to overcome typical roadblocks that most entrepreneurs face, how to set and make business goals, when to hire the first employee and how to successfully run a profitable, long-term business with Mary Logan Bikoff, Editor-in-Chief of Atlanta Magazine’s HOME.

Fall Design Week buyers can also explore programming presented as part of the co-located VOW | New World of Bridal® (September 25-27, 2018). Highlights include Desiree Siegfried of Desiree Hartsock Bridal sharing “Styling & Marketing to Sell the Millennial Bride” and the VOW | New World of Bridal Fashion Show both on Tuesday, September 25.

In addition to must-see programming, Fall Design Week attendees also enjoy amenities like complimentary headshots and styling sessions, giveaways and hospitality.

For more information, visit AmericasMart.com/FallDesignWeek.