When I consider my 25+ years covering the office furniture industry, most of the connections I’ve made have come from attending shows. I know someone who knows someone else who introduces me to the next person.

For all the talk about digital discovery, virtual meetings and the convenience of doing business from a screen, the trade show remains one of the office furniture industry’s most important points of connection. That may sound old-fashioned. It isn’t. Simply put, if you don’t show up, you don’t know.

Furniture is physical. You sit in it, touch it, move it, test how it works and how it feels. You see finishes under real light and discover details that don’t come through in a product image or spec sheet. And most important, you meet the people behind the products.

That is why trade shows continue to matter.

The office furniture industry has spent years adapting to a more digital, distributed way of doing business. Dealers can conduct meetings from their conference rooms and designers can research products online. Manufacturers can launch products through sophisticated digital presentations and AI can summarize almost anything.

None of that replaces walking into a showroom or exhibit hall and encountering something you weren’t looking for. I come from a background in the daily newspaper industry, and I still relish going through the print edition of The New York Times, where I always find a story that I wasn’t looking for but that still catches my interest.

The best trade shows create that same kind of serendipity. They compress an enormous amount of information into a few days and put manufacturers, dealers, designers, architects, facility managers and end users in the same place. A person can see a new product, sit in it, talk with its designer, discover a related material and then walk across the aisle to find an entirely different solution. That is almost impossible to replicate online.

The upcoming EDspaces, Oct. 28-30 in Kansas City, is a good example of why specialized shows remain relevant. The event brings together manufacturers and the architects, designers, facility professionals and administrators responsible for educational environments. EDspaces describes itself as a place where attendees can explore products and solutions while connecting directly with the people making decisions about learning environments.

We have recognized the importance of the educational design market for some time, and I have attended EDspaces for years, but it was repeated meetings with Jolene Levin that led to our launch of learninginsight magazine. This year, learninginsight will have its own space at EDspaces. INDEAL will also be there, giving its Dealer Members an opportunity to connect with INDEAL Brand Partners exhibiting at the show and explore product solutions for the education market. For Dealers looking to grow their presence in education, it’s another way to make those connections and discover new opportunities in person.

The same is true of the Healthcare Design Conference + Expo, Oct. 17-20 in New Orleans. More than 400 vendors are expected for the 2026 event, which combines product sourcing with education, networking and programming focused on healthcare environments.

And look at the exhibitor list. It includes furniture manufacturers such as Haworth, Humanscale, KI, Kimball International, JSI Health, Krug Healthcare, Kwalu and Global Furniture Group, along with flooring, lighting, technology, architectural products and healthcare-specific solutions.

The shows themselves have become more relevant too. The old model was product-centric. Here is our new chair. Here is our new desk. Here is our new workstation. The better shows have become environment-centric, showing how these products work together to solve a problem.

Of course, in the office furniture industry, it’s not only what you know that matters, but who you know. Relationships are critically important, and the office furniture business is still a relationship business. People buy from companies they trust. Dealers depend on manufacturer relationships. Designers want to know that a manufacturer will answer the phone when a project gets complicated. Manufacturers want to understand what dealers and designers are hearing from their customers.

A trade show accelerates and accentuates all of those relationships.

You can accomplish a lot on Zoom. You can accomplish even more with a well-designed website. But neither necessarily produces the five-minute conversation that leads to a new partnership, a product idea, a specification or a sale.

There is also value in simply seeing what everyone else is doing. Trade shows are one of the few places where an industry can look at itself in real time. Trends become obvious, categories expand or contract, and materials migrate from one market to another. Competitors reveal where they think the market is headed. Designers see what manufacturers are investing in. Manufacturers hear, directly and (hopefully) bluntly, what the market wants.

That collective intelligence is one of the industry’s most valuable assets. Let’s hope we get a chance to connect in Kansas City and New Orleans next month.