What Three Years at the Table Taught Me About High Point Market
Updated: Oct 15
I remember sitting across our conference room table from Jeff Scheffer when he asked me to become Vice Chair, and eventually Chair, of the High Point Market Authority Board.
I knew Jeff. But I also knew who Jeff was in our industry. At the time, he was President of Universal Furniture and someone I considered to be an industry icon. So having him come to our office, sit in our conference room and ask me to step toward a role historically held largely by C-suite leaders of major furniture companies was, quite frankly, a little disorienting.
I remember thinking, Why me? I genuinely didn't understand it. I was an interior designer, not a furniture manufacturer.
Jeff saw it differently.
I had spent nearly 30 years walking High Point and other industry markets as a buyer. Our firm had been designing showrooms for years, so I also understood High Point Market from the perspective of exhibitors and the buyers they were trying to attract. And perhaps most personally, I was a High Pointer. This wasn't simply where I came twice a year to do business. This was home.
Jeff and his Board saw those different perspectives as an asset. Three years later, as my time as Board Chair comes to an end, I understand that differently than I did sitting across the table from him that day.
I thought I knew High Point Market.
After 30 years, you would think I did.
Christi Barbour and Alex Shufford III at the HPMA Board transition ceremony. 
The Barbour Spangle Design team touring clients through High Point Market.
I knew what it felt like to arrive with a list of showrooms to see and miles to cover. I knew the excitement of discovering something new for a client. I knew High Point Market as an interior designer, a buyer, a business owner and someone whose firm helps exhibitors create the very showrooms people come here to experience.
But I didn't fully understand the ecosystem behind it.
Before joining the High Point Market Authority (HPMA) leadership, I largely thought of High Point Market (HPMKT) in terms of furniture manufacturers and retail buyers. From inside the organization, I saw something so much bigger.
I saw how deeply the HPMA thinks about the health of our entire industry: manufacturers and exhibitors, yes, but also retailers, interior designers and the community that welcomes all of us here twice a year.
I came to better understand HPMKT's economic impact on our community and gained a greater appreciation for the importance of state support and the responsibility that comes with it. I listened to conversations about what independent brick-and-mortar retailers need to survive. We spent a great deal of time talking about designers, what brings them to High Point, the challenges they experience when they get here, and what will keep a new generation coming back.
During my time in HPMA leadership, I also had the opportunity to work alongside HPMKT organizers and a group of industry leaders to help establish what became the Diversity Advocacy Alliance (DAA). We believed it was important to look honestly at who was represented at High Point Market and within our industry's leadership, who wasn't, and what we could do to create a more welcoming environment.
The DAA grew from that work, with a commitment to expanding representation of the BIPOC community, amplifying voices that had historically been underrepresented, and helping create a HPMKT where more people could see themselves belonging.
I've been proud to remain part of that work. To me, it isn't separate from the question of High Point Market's future. If we're serious about staying relevant to the next generation, we also have to be serious about who shapes it.
Looking Toward What Comes Next
My tenure as Chair also came at an interesting moment for our industry.
We had just lived through something few of us could have ever imagined. During the COVID-19 pandemic, there was a period when we didn't know what the future of large gatherings, conferences and markets would look like. Would people still gather this way?
I think one thing we learned is that they absolutely do. Alex Shuford, III once described HPMKT as “the giant collective hug” our industry needed after COVID, and I've loved his description ever since.
High Point Market is certainly about product and commerce, but I believe even more strongly today that it is also about connection. It's where relationships are formed and renewed, where ideas are exchanged, and where people discover what's changing and join the larger conversation about where our industry is going. And High Point gets to play host to all of it, extending the gracious Southern hospitality that is such an important part of the Market experience.
That makes protecting its future incredibly important to me, both as someone who has spent her career in this industry and as someone who calls High Point home.
But protecting its future doesn't mean protecting the status quo.
An institution doesn't remain important simply because it always has been. Relevance has to keep being earned.
That became a significant focus of our work over these last three years. Early on, we held a strategic planning retreat and engaged outside perspectives to better understand the future furniture buyer. We traveled to other markets in the U.S. and around the world, including Maison & Objet in Paris and Salone del Mobile in Milan, to see what others were doing and, more importantly, to come home asking better questions.
How are buying behaviors changing? What does the next generation of designers need from HPMKT? What role will independent retailers play? How do we continue improving the experience for the people who come here?
HPMA leadership attending KBIS. 
Bill Darcy, President of NKBA and Tammy Covington, President of HPMA.
Another important part of looking toward the future has been building relationships beyond the traditional boundaries of the home furnishings industry. One I've particularly enjoyed watching grow is the relationship between High Point Market and the National Kitchen & Bath Association (NKBA). Tammy Covington has done a wonderful job stewarding that relationship, and I've been grateful to play a role as it has developed. To me, it's another example of what can happen when we look for opportunities to bring adjacent design communities together.
That relationship has become personal for me, too. NKBA has invited me into their community in ways I deeply appreciate, including speaking at their Women To Women Leadership Conference and, most recently, asking our Barbour Spangle Design team to design the Showhouse inside their new High Point showroom. Watching these relationships grow and overlap has reinforced something I've come to believe even more strongly as Chair: the future of HPMKT isn't about narrowing the circle. It's about continuing to build meaningful reasons for more of the design community to see High Point as a place where they belong.
And perhaps that leads to the question that has mattered most to me: What will it take for High Point Market not simply to remain relevant, but to continue leading our industry in design, ideas and thought leadership?
I hope we never stop asking that question.
Christi Barbour speaking to an audience at NKBA's Women To Women Conference. 
NKBA Women To Women 2026 
NKBA Women To Women 2026 
NKBA Women To Women opening reception. 
NKBA Women To Women group dinner.
The People
For all the strategy, meetings, travel and conversations, the people are what I will treasure most from these years.
At the top of that list is Tammy Covington.
Long before Tammy became President of the High Point Market Authority, and before I became Chair, she would routinely tell me that I had really good instincts. I respected and admired her enormously, so I listened.
One of the unexpected gifts of working so closely with Tammy has been learning to trust my own instincts more. We approach things differently, and I think that's part of what made our relationship work so well. I've loved being someone she could bounce ideas off, ask “what if?” with, or call when something needed another perspective.
We've traveled the world together, wrestled with big questions, laughed (a lot) and spent countless hours thinking about what HPMKT could become. Our friendship and partnership have made me a better leader, and I will carry that with me long after my term ends.
Christi Barbour and Tammy Covington in Milan. 
Christi Barbour and Tammy Covington in Paris. 
Tammy Covington at Salone del Mobile.
I've also developed tremendous respect for the remarkable team behind High Point Market. They are truly small and mighty.
Having served on many boards over the course of my career, I have appreciated that our board has been able to serve as a true governing board. Our role is to ask questions, provide perspective and fiduciary stewardship, help establish a vision for the future, and create benchmarks by which we can measure progress. But the HPMA team does the real work. They are the ones carrying that vision forward, solving problems, building relationships and creating the experience that tens of thousands of people encounter when they arrive in High Point. I've loved seeing up close how much goes into making that happen.
And then there are the people I've had the privilege of serving beside on our Executive Committee and Board. I came into this experience expecting colleagues and will leave it with lifelong friends. I deeply admire and respect these leaders, who bring different experiences and perspectives to the table but share a belief in the importance of HPMKT and a willingness to put personal agendas aside and give their time and wisdom to its future.
One More Market
As I write this, I'm preparing for my final HPMKT as Chair, and Tammy has already made sure I'm involved in plenty. 😊
There will be meetings, events and conversations. There will be people to welcome and places to be. High Point Market has never exactly been known for moving slowly.
But this time, I want to walk through it a little differently.
For three years, I've focused so much of my attention on what comes next. What does HPMKT need to become? What is changing? Where are the opportunities? How do we make sure this extraordinary gathering continues to matter to the generations that follow ours?
Those questions will matter enormously to me long after I leave this seat. But for this HPMKT, I also want to pay attention to what's right in front of me: streets filled with people from around the world, showrooms buzzing, designers discovering something they've never seen before, and retailers reconnecting with people they've known for decades.
There will be conversations happening over dinner, on shuttles, in hallways and everywhere in between. My industry will gather in my hometown, and after these three years, I think I will experience that a little differently.
High Point has a dual personality. Most of the year, it has a quiet, bucolic, small-town feel. But for several weeks each year, it becomes this bustling, global center of creativity and design.
I love and need both.
Three years went much faster than I ever imagined. So for this last HPMKT as Chair, more than anything, I want to notice it, absorb what a wonderful experience this has been personally and professionally, and appreciate the people I've had the privilege of sharing it with.
And try not to let it slip by too quickly.
See The Good,
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