Florida Design Sponsors International Design Center Opening

Recently, Florida Design sponsored the opening of the Inter­national Design Center, located midway between Naples and Fort Myers. We expected only a few hundred attendees because the event took place at the end of the busy winter season, so we brought only 300 cop­ies of the magazine to the opening. Within an hour, all of our magazines disappeared as the event drew more than 3,000 people.

During the opening, I spent some time with owner, de­veloper and entrepreneur Margaret Miller, who said she opened the design center because she couldn’t find the kind of high-quality pieces she was looking for in the Naples-Sarasota metro area. One of the highlights of the International Design Center is that the first floor is open to everyone, meaning the public has access to the sometimes off-limits world of design. The second and third floors are open to the trade only.

Many of the nation’s elite showrooms are increasing their exposure in Florida by open­­ing in the Inter­na­tional Design Center, such as Clive Chris­tian, Francesco Molon and Baker Furniture, to name a few. The fact that these leading showrooms from around the country are opening here further proves that Florida is one of the world’s most successful markets for showcasing fine furnishings and design.

Publisher Jeff Lichtenstein