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Virtual furniture trade fairs have been heavily boosted by the current situation of a global pandemic. Now, it’s recommended that we avoid big gatherings, practice social distancing and avoid closed spaces.

Both of these modes of presenting furniture have their advantages and drawbacks. In this article, we will be looking at some of their differences and list features of each of these trade fair types.

Organizing

When we say organizing, we are talking about all those pre-activities necessary to successfully present furniture. If we are talking about a traditional furniture trade fair, we need to find a space that’s large enough to host furniture pieces or lease and existing trade fair space.

Space rental costs on classic furniture trade fairs can be extremely high. They are charged per square meter, and you certainly need more space when you’re presenting various larger samples of furniture.

Then, you need to pick the best of the best when it comes to your furniture pieces, because you are limited by space. You need to perfectly pack and transport those pieces of furniture to the venue. The transport of furniture pieces is a costly aspect, regardless of whether you’re transporting it yourself or renting it. Also, organizing your presence at classic furniture trade shows take up a lot of time, from installing and decorating your booth to uninstalling it when you’re done and repacking for the transport back to your storage spaces.

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Also, you need to hire a number of staff members who will personally present those pieces of furniture to all interested visitors. This severely increases the cost of organizing a presence at a trade show because of the costs of travel, accommodation, food and per diem payments for your staff members. Also, classic furniture trade fairs imply a production of a large quantity of promo materials. You hand these out to visitors, but you do not have measureable feedback about their ROI.

On the other hand, organization and transport is much easier and budget-friendly at virtual furniture trade fair shows. You just need to find media or web space where you can present your furniture. Of course, you won’t need to do any packing or transport, nor hire staff to present the samples.

What we need in a virtual setting is a well-developed virtual presentation space which transfers the experience of a classic fair. Also, it’s recommended to use interactive communication and engage with visitors in order to get the feeling of live participation (fair tickets, suggestion and comment surveys, mini-quizzed, thank you notes…)

Also, every traditional trade fair has its working hours, while a virtual furniture trade show is available 24/7. In a classic furniture trade fair, visitors usually make one round, while as for the virtual variant, it’s possible to visit it an unlimited number of times. Most virtual furniture fairs are mobile-responsive, which means you can access it from any device.

Offer variety

In the first section, we already touched upon the fact that there is a space limit for furniture presentation in traditional trade fair shows. If you want to present furniture for several different rooms on a classic furniture fair, you have to somehow divide that offer and make it more attractive. This, in turn, will demand more space and increase your costs.

Next to that, you should also think about presenting various materials, colors and combinations. For a classic furniture trade show, this is a complex activity that has to take into account different consumer interests and trends.

In this regard too, a virtual furniture trade fair can simplify a lot of things. You just need a good web designer who can encapsulate your ideas in a visual form. The virtual visitors will then browse around rooms and collections on their own, choose their own color and material combinations. To improve their experience, you should include as many types of video content, 3D animations, virtual walkthroughs, organize live webinars, virtual conferences, live chat options…

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Consumer behavior

This is, perhaps, the only aspect in which you can find direct advantages of a traditional furniture trade fair compared to a virtual one. Furniture is something that consumer rarely change. Many have trouble visualizing isolated pieces in their own space. Ultimately, they want real physical contact with the material it’s made of.

Bigger furniture retailers solve the visualization issue by offering apps that can “insert” furniture into your existing space before you actually buy it for the first time. At classic furniture fairs, it seems visitors enjoy walking around and talking to staff members. However, in our fast-paced day and age, there are few of us who have enough time for these strolls.

Regardless of a big expense, for many people, picking out new furniture is an enjoyable and fun activity. That is why you should describe your products extra well when you’re presenting on a virtual furniture fair, offer as many different combinations and emphasize all the advantages of your furniture.

Izvor slike: Impact Talks

Measuring Results

Virtual furniture trade fairs are the future of presenting and marketing furniture because of the opportunity to efficiently measure results. With online contact forms and entries to the virtual fair, conference or webinar, it will be easy to fill up and store our database of potential customers. By organizing virtual conferences, we can cooperate with stakeholders from all over the world.

In a virtual furniture trade fair, it’s very easy to measure the number of visits to the website. Also, these numbers are always singificantly higher than in any other classic furniture show.

Conclusion

Finally, we can safely say that furniture is a type of product that certainly demands a lot of effort from sellers. That is why furniture trade fair shows play a big role in the marketing and sales process.

General trends in furniture sales definitely skew towards virtual trade fair shows. This enables easier organization and caters to busy customers. Of course, traditional fairs can still achieve great sales results if approached in a smart way. However, virtual furniture trade fairs will have a higher engagement rate, boost lead generation, while sales results will be more easily measured.

No matter if you’re redesigning your old space or creating a new one, here are some new trends in interior design you can apply on your own space as well. Due to the current situation, when most big furniture trade fairs are cancelled, we can use the virtual world for inspiration. Let’s see what experts have to say!

The New Open Space

Open floor concepts have been an interior design trend for quite some time. However, year after year, the number of rooms that are included in open-space plans increases. At the beginning, it was kitchens, dining rooms and living rooms. Now, the trend is expanding to bedrooms and offices.

The new normal has brought upon a huge shift in the way we work – from home. Now, we are forced to fit in a real working space in our interior, even if we didn’t have one before.

Most often, we just need a small, functional desk, a shelf or document archiver and a comfortable chair. The market for office furniture is huge and versatile, so anyone can easily find exactly what they need without meddling with the stylistic vibe of the rest of the space.

Connection to nature

Including natural elements in interior design is also a trend that’s here to stay. In other words, the aim of an urban, trendy interior design is to enable a smooth transition between closed spaces and the outside, natural world. This can be achieved in several ways.

Natural-material furniture or furniture parts, natural patterns on the walls and an increase in green plants indoors are indeed trendy in 2020. For those who feel more bold, there are floral wallpapers with huge, statement floral patterns.

It’s also popular and recommended to have at least a few green plants. They will freshen up any space and play an important functional and decorative role. You can also use various natural decorative elements, natural and floral textiles, pillows, glasses…

Back to vintage roots

Just a couple of pieces of vintage furniture in your space will be enough to make it 2021-ready.

Many people mix up vintage and retro. The basic difference between these is the period to which they refer. Retro items stem from the ’60-’90 period, while vintage style is quite older. The colours of vintage items are calming and pastel. Furniture is usually made of wood, but also harder materials. The furniture is upholstered and ultra-comfy, mirrors have big, impressive frames.

Add just a single piece of vintage furniture to your space – a chandelier, photo frame or a wooden dresser and complete your functional space with a dash of history.

The Color Blue

Blue is an absolute hit in interior design this year. You can use blue paint for your entire room or just one wall. Get a sofa or an armchair in this attractive color.

If you’re not a big fan of blue, but you want to keep up with the trends, you can choose just a couple of items that you will fit into your current space and match with other colors. It can be a blue carpet, picture frame, decoration piece…

Freestanding bathtubs

These bathtubs are the latest trend in bathroom design. Of course, it’s much easier to fit them into the space when you’re designing from scratch. Still, you should keep this trend in mind even when you’re re-decorating your old bathroom. Create a tiny wellness sanctuary where you can enjoy to the maximum.

To start with, you would need to have enough square footage to set up this bathtub in your bathroom. An even better solution would be to install both a shower and a bathtub to cater to all family members. All the while, the bathroom would be adapted to the modern, fast way of living. Just imagine how refreshing it would be to enjoy those relaxing moments in a beautiful, modern, freestanding bathtub.

Abstract motifs

The goal of this new trend is to make any home a small or big piece of art by using geometrical shapes of various items, paintings and decorations.

Abstract motifs are fairly easy to fit into the rest of the design because of their clear-cut lines. Simply choose a big abstract painting with colors that you like and that fit well with the rest of your interior. You can even paint one on your own. The result will be an original, unique and modern space.

Are you already following some of these? What is your new favorite interior design trend?

Painting furniture will lead to a simple transformation of the interior. By correctly selecting colors and with a few simple rules for the coloring of furniture, your space will have a new glow as a result. Read our simple guide through the paint of furniture and redecorate your home!

Painting furniture: Preparations for coloring furniture

Firstly, you need to prepare furniture you want to renovate and paint. Grinding of furniture is the basic phase of every furniture renovation. Depends on the color on furniture, consequently, you can grind in several ways:

Standard wood color – usual grinding medium to fine grinding paper or mechanical.
Oil based colors – it is necessary to use the heat fan, then grinding with fine grinding paper.
Ultrapas – warm with hair dryer or iron and peel away. Remove the remains by grinding.
Veneer made of real wood – remove damaged parts, repair damage with wood putty and dry. After drying, grind.

Secondly, after grinding, the furniture should be thoroughly cleaned from dust and impurities and left to dry. It is necessary to repair all irregularities, holes, scratches and damage with wood putty.

Basic tools and accessories necessary for the renovation of old furniture:
– rough and gentle grind paper
– dust-cleaning cloth
– brushes and rollers
Depending on the material from which the furniture is made, basic and final coatings and appropriate colors.

Painting furniture: storage spaces

Closets and shelves occupy the most space in the interior. The kitchen is the central space in the home, if you want to change it simply paint cabinets.

Wooden cabinets – simply grind them with grind paper, clean from the dust and apply a primer. After that, select the color for wood in the desired shade and paint. Apply the paint in two layers. Make enough time between coatings to dry completely.

Laminated cabinets – the first step is grinding, machines or paper, cleaning dust from grinding and impurities. When the surface is clean apply primer oil-based coating that will go into two layers. Wait for the first one to dry completely and inflict the second one.
After that, your kitchen is ready to paint.

Tip: in addition to a new color, add new handles to your kitchen elements that will round the appearance. For inspiration, see the furniture of our exhibitors!

This applies to all sorts of cabinets, closets, shelves and storage spaces in your home. Redecorating the furniture with new paint and in addition new handles will refresh the space. Therefore color choice can increase, heighten and make space more modern.

How to achieve distressed style?

Distressed or washed-out appearance in interior design is a style that has great popularity. If you want to enter a dose of relaxation and feel at home like at house on the beach choose a piece of wooden furniture from the living room or bedroom. Renovating old furniture is an efficient and economical way of renovating home.

You must grind and clean furniture from dust, than dry. Use two colors should to achieve the washed effect. Achieve washed effect using matte cover colors in two shades. The base color is darker while the final color is brighter.

1. way: When the first color is dried, use wax or pastel to paint the places where you want the final color not to be received, then apply second color. The color will not be accepted in places covered with pastel and you will get wanted look. Remove the wax and pastel by gentle grinding in order to discover places that are wanted to remain in the color of the base. After grinding and final cleaning, paint furniture with protective varnish.
2. way: If a piece of furniture is in a darker shade that you like, use it as a base color. After grinding and cleaning, apply second color in two layers. When dried grind desired parts with rough paper. End up painting with protective varnish.

Painting wood paneling – new glow of the old trend

Renovating furniture has encouraged you, everything fits in style but you’re not sure what to do with the paneling on the walls? The pattern of wood in brown orange tones does not match the style you entered into the space? Paint wood paneling with a simple DIY procedure.

Painting wood paneling:
If wood paneling has gloss ending coat, remove it with grinding. It is necessary to obtain a slightly roasted wood texture so that the color receives as much as possible. Apply wood protection coating after cleaning from dust. When dried, paint with the desired color. In conclusion if paneling is located in areas where large amount of steam is generating, it is desirable to apply a protective layer that will protect wood from moisture.

Tip: a light colored wood paneling will increase and heighten the space. White-colored paneling is a huge trend in the interior world. Follow our page for new trends!