At no other time in its 50-plus year history has NeoCon faced such a fundamental shift it is looking at. Two major manufacturers have left theMart for Chicago's Fulton Market, which threatens to pull others away from the show.
Show organizers are still deciding what to do: Create a Chicago design week similar to iSalone in Milan or ICFF in New York, where there is a main “hub” show with loosely associated satellite events surrounding it, or hold tight to the NeoCon concept and reserve it only for those in theMart.
Next year's NeoCon will show signs of both strategies. As a real estate company, theMart has a vested interest in keeping the show close to home — at least for now. Two major additions are coming to NeoCon. The first is Confluence Chicago, a multidisciplinary design ideas platform created in tandem with BIFMA (the not‐for-profit trade association for business and institutional furniture manufacturers). Designing a Better Chicago, a partnership with Chicago's Department of Cultural Affairs and Specials Events (DCASE) and the Design Museum of Chicago, also has been created to highlight, leverage and support Chicago's vast design legacy and talent.
At the same time, theMart is working to fill the gaping void that will be left by Herman Miller on the third floor. With interest in permanent showroom space still very high, Byron Morton, vice president of leasing, said he expects vacancies to be filled by the show in June. The Herman Miller space is already 50 percent filled, he added, which should make for a very different look for what effectively is the “front door” of the show.
“So the challenge we have is much like the challenge we had with back-filling Knoll — to fill it with some design integrity in a high level of design, and we're able to do that,” he said. “It's kind of fun, too, because it gives us the opportunity to rewrite the playbook a little bit.” A freshness will be added to three and the way people enter the building and the show in June, he noted.
TheMart is trying to bolster NeoCon, promoting the idea that a critical mass of large and small manufacturers is a powerful draw for the show. Morton acknowledged other companies are looking outside theMart, testing the waters to see if a move to Fulton Market or somewhere else in the city makes sense.
Not only are manufacturers looking, but he said the real estate brokerage community is “looking at this place as a big giant pot of gold.” The brokerage community in Chicago, Morton said, is aggressively trying to get engagements with the furniture community that call theMart home.
Though theMart's grip on NeoCon may be loosening, show organizers believe keeping critical mass in the building is important.
“The strength of the core is of the utmost importance, not only to us, but to everybody that has an investment in the city of Chicago from a showroom perspective,” Morton said. “If the core being NeoCon and then theMart is not strong, there's really not a lot of justification for the level of investment that a lot of these manufacturers have here.
“Even when you look at the mid-tier and smaller manufacturers, their investment in Chicago is significantly larger than in markets like New York and L.A. and San Francisco. And that's because of NeoCon. Our goal is to really maintain the strength of the core by growing the overall audience and reaching out to more than workplace A&D and the dealer community and some level of end users to really expand that to include all design level professionals.”
Morton said he feels very comfortable theMart will maintain the majors in the building. He said they worked to shore up a number of large scale leases to keep the majors that are left around for the long term. “And to that end, too, we feel very comfortable that we can maintain the critical mass of smaller- and medium-sized companies,” he said. “So I personally feel like — and this whole team feels like — we're in really good shape.”
Lisa Simonian, vice president of marketing, said Confluence Chicago and Designing a Better Chicago broadens the reach of NeoCon beyond the walls of theMart, creating an international commercial interiors and design event.
“The city is excited to be collaborating with us,” she said. “We want to do more to leverage the city of Chicago and showcase the great design that's here, the great architecture and the great interior design from different neighborhoods and communities. (With) everything from graphic design and artists, there's such a wealth of great design, design legacy, talent, community here that we really want to do more to leverage that, showcase that to the NeoCon audience. And then the city is really excited as well about working with us so that they can tell more of a design story.”
The NeoCon Plaza, the popular outdoor amenity space spanning theMART's South Drive, will return in 2020 with Gensler Chicago back on board as the design partner. NeoCon 2020 will also debut a danishdesign MAKERS exhibition featuring the work of 20 designers with ties to the Danish design culture.
The additions to NeoCon are designed to stretch the show, prompting visitors to spend more time in Chicago beyond the crush of Monday and early Tuesday. Some of the events and exhibitions will last far beyond the show dates. For example, a design installation will open at NeoCon and stay in place through October as part of the Designing a Better Chicago project, Simonian said. And for the first time, companies exhibiting outside theMart will be able to sponsor and participate in these new events.
Regardless of the changes and additions, Morton said NeoCon will remain uniquely Chicago.
“We're not really modeling ourselves after anybody,” he said when asked if NeoCon could ultimately turn into something more akin to iSalone or ICFF. “I think our biggest goal is to shift to more of an experiential kind of an event. We don't want to lose the fact that NeoCon is the product launch platform for the industry. We don't want to lose sight of that, but at the same time, there's potential to provide a different level of experience that we haven't done in the past.”
Details about these and other NeoCon programs, events and activations will be updated in the coming months on NeoCon.com. Online registration for NeoCon 2020 will open in January at www.NeoCon.com. Dates for the event are June 8-10, 2020.