Bedding veteran Gerry Borreggine is back in town this week on the 40th anniversary of his first trip to the High Point Market. It’s a trip down déjà vu lane.
“From the perspective of a visitor, the most important perspective for a market that relies on visitors for its success, the market has changed very little,” says Borreggine, chief executive officer and president of Therapedic International. “It’s almost like a time capsule. The big buildings in the center of town still attract people from around the world.”
That’s a reference to the heart of the market, which remains, as it was when he first came to High Point, the interlocking buildings that comprise the International Home Furnishings Center, rising above the downtown landscape like medieval castles, vast fortresses of home furnishings.
Borreggine is thoroughly at home in this furniture stronghold. His decades in High Point included long stints as a buyer and then as an exhibitor. Therapedic isn’t currently showing in High Point — Borreggine hopes the company will return before long — but he never misses a High Point market and the business opportunities and insights those markets provide him.
His schedule this week is busy. He’ll be shooting videos with industry leaders, meeting with key players, attending parties and hosting business lunches and dinners. He’s built up a strong network of industry friends and colleagues in his regular trips to High Point over the years, and he enjoys catching up with them at market and taking the pulse of the industry.
Along the way, he’s become a champion of the High Point Market, going so far as to predict that it will enjoy a bedding resurgence someday.
While the market has grown substantially and evolved over the years, its core offering remains the same: a compelling fair of showrooms packed with new products and services and brimming with the business-building and networking opportunities that result when home furnishings buyers and sellers come together.
That offering brought Borreggine’s father, Frank, to High Point back in the 1960s when he was a bedding buyer for Lit Brothers, a Philadelphia department store. And in the 1980s, when the Borreggine family was running 40 Winks, a Philadelphia-based sleep shop, it first welcomed Gerry, his father, and his brother and sister to town. Their first High Point Market together was in 1984. They stayed at a hotel in Burlington; there were no rooms to be had in High Point.
Gerry Borreggine had heard about High Point for decades, ever since his father first started coming to the market. High Point was “a foreign place” — someplace mysterious and utterly unknown to him.
His first look at High Point caught him off guard. “I was surprised at how small it was,” he admitted. His big-city upbringing hadn’t prepared him for the much smaller city he found. He also wasn’t prepared for all of the driving the market required, including trips to Lenoir and Hickory, which were part of the market rounds in those days.
Frank Borreggine taught his family members that market was about more than mattresses. “He wanted us to see the bigger picture,” Gerry Borreggine recalled. “So we shopped the brass bed companies. That included Berkshire, led by Dick Singer, and Dresher, headed by Barry Merkin.”
After years of High Point visits to mattress and metal bed showrooms, Borreggine’s market role changed in the early 2000s. 40 Winks fell victim to a brutal retail marketplace, and Borreggine moved to the wholesale side of the business, joining Therapedic International. He knew exactly where Therapedic should show its wares.
He opened Therapedic’s first corporate showroom in High Point in 2006. The company exhibited first in Market Square, then in Plaza Suites and later in the IHFC. The rhythms, sights and sounds of the High Point Market had become part of his nature.
That led him to a major business decision. Therapedic would plant its flag in High Point. A new market was emerging in faraway Las Vegas, but Borreggine was sticking with his longtime High Point roots.
The mattress industry’s strong support for the new Las Vegas Market quickly drew a critical mass of mattress showrooms to the World Market Center campus, and eventually led Therapedic to join the bedding parade there.
But Therapedic continued to show in High Point, too, and stood firm over the years even as other mattress companies exited the High Point scene. Three years ago, Therapedic quietly made its own exit.
“I want to come back at a reasonable offer,” Borreggine said of a possible return to High Point. “The bedding companies coalesced to bring the bedding market to Las Vegas, and our High Point showroom became an adjunct. We can’t afford full pricing on both showrooms.”
High Point has some great advantages. It remains at the center of the home furnishings industry, Borreggine said.
“The sun is still in High Point,” he said. “It’s like the solar system. All planetary action revolves around the sun.”
And speaking of the sun, he’s hoping for sunny skies this week as he trods familiar grounds in High Point. It is good to be home there again.
