Not Showroom Inaugurates Furniture Fair And Design Exhibition

As China‘s multibrand retail industry reaches a turning point, Shanghai‘s Not Showroom aims to bridge fashion and design through a new trade show format that integrates furniture, home goods and apparel.

XC Show, the furniture fair as well as the “Flair in Focus” design exhibition, launched Monday at Not’s parent company Chenfeng Group’s campus in Kunshan, a city an hour’s drive away from downtown Shanghai.

For Ying Zhang, founder of Not Showroom, XC Show was a response to multibrand retailers’ need to expand into lifestyle and home goods, especially in lower-tiered cities, where store sizes can be as big as a small stand-alone building.

“Buyers are interested in having an aesthetic extension, or a natural extension of their fashion offerings, some are even coming to us with retail refurbishment requests,” Zhang explained.

“Furniture has traditionally been a distributor business, but we want our positioning to be a little different; we want to be able to explore different business models,” said Zhang, without elaborating.

However, Zhang did reveal that the apparel manufacturer’s Kunshan campus, which will soon include another plot of land spanning more than 700,000 square feet, will play a crucial part in Chenfeng’s ambition to launch a creative hub in the next two years or so.

“It will include education, incubation and commercial projects, all focused on new lifestyle trends,” Zhang said.

The hub, part of the Kunshan-Huaqiao satellite city, is seen as Suzhou’s effort to move up the manufacturing value chain as fashion production increasingly shifts to Southeast Asia.

The exhibition component of the trade show was overseen by Manifesto, a design-focused platform cofounded by former Wallpaper China editor in chief Guo Jiacheng. The exhibition fans out across four levels and features 60 designer furniture brands, ranging from commercial heavyweights such as Cassina, String and Artemide to young names such as Dahye Jeong, Pia Glasswork and Sophie Lou Jacobsen.

Local headliners include the modernist furniture and design collectible dealers Dontouch and Maison Wave and Gaska, a modular wooden furniture brand. A total of 37 Chinese design labels, most of which launched in the last few years, are included in the show.

The “Flair in Focus” exhibition will run until Sunday.

“A lot of designers began as passion projects that quickly got very experimental. They feel like design is a hobby, not necessarily as a business,” said Guo, who discovered some of the designers on Xiaohongshu, the popular Chinese social commerce platform.

To offer an elevated viewing experience, local architecture and interior firms, including F.O.G. Architecture, which designed Lemaire‘s Chengdu flagship; Order Studio, and Waarchi Studio have created a series of interior scenes for the works.

“We have established industry fairs, such as Design Shanghai and the China International Furniture Fair in Guangzhou, but the market is missing a more experience-driven or a more consumer-friendly design fair,” Guo explained. “We look up to Alcova and Matter and Shape in that respect,” he added, referring to the Milan-based design platform and the design show held during Paris Fashion Week.

In the spirit of co-creation, Not Showroom’s star designers — including 8on8, WHM, Zhong Zixin, Swaying and Commxn Commxn — have teamed with Ikea to transform a series of furniture or homeware into unique artworks that evoke the Swedish retailer’s “democratic design” ethos. The works, which are showcased in Kunshan, offer a preview of what’s to come during Ikea’s “Kaleidoscope of Life” design award in China.

A parallel exhibition is being staged at XC273, the downtown Shanghai multibrand retail store also owned by Chenfeng Group.

This season during Shanghai Fashion Week, Not Showroom’s fashion wholesale business will also be located in downtown Shanghai, featuring a selective lineup of 21 brands. Leading the roster are Penultimate, Yuhan Wang, Tommy Zhong and more.

“An Oōeli-alike project is not completely out of the picture,” observed Guo. “This will be a space to stage ‘happenings,’ with an extra vacation vibe on top.”