You Must Invest in an Extra Day (or Two) in Chicago This Year

The calendar doesn’t lie, but it does occasionally try to break us. If you’ve been in this industry for any amount of time, you know the feeling of early June. The air in Chicago starts to thicken with humidity and the frantic energy of a thousand installers trying to get a showroom floor level and fresh paint on the walls by Monday morning. But this year, the industry isn’t just showing up in the Windy City; it’s taking over.

For decades, the pilgrimage was simple: You went to THE MART. You braved the elevators, you walked the loops until your shins throbbed, and you drank enough lukewarm showroom Chardonnay to power a small village. But the geography of our industry has shifted. Between the classic halls of NeoCon, the high-energy pulse of Fulton Market Design Days and now, the intellectual weight of Chicago Design Week, we are looking at what could be the most consequential seven days in the history of North American design.

If you’re planning on the traditional “in-and-out” two-day sprint, you’re making a mistake. You aren’t just going to miss a few parties; you’re going to miss the pivot point of the post-pandemic workplace. Here is why you need to call your travel agent and add 48 hours to your Chicago stay.

We have reached what can only be described as a chaotic equilibrium in Chicago. For a while, there was a nervous “either/or” energy between the Merchandise Mart and Fulton Market. Would the exodus of big brands to the West Loop kill the Big House? Or would the corporate scale of THE MART stifle the cool factor of Fulton Market?

The answer, as it turns out, is a resounding “neither.” They have fed off each other. THE MART has reinvented itself, leaning into its status as the grand cathedral of the industry. It remains the place where you see the sheer scale of the contract world — where massive corporate floorplates, healthcare, education and now lighting are discovered.

But then you hop on the Green Line, jump on a shuttle or grab an Uber to Fulton Market, and the vibe shifts instantly. Fulton Market Design Days is street-level, it’s tactile, and it feels like a neighborhood rather than a mall. You need a full day just to wander the streets, popping into the converted warehouses where the light hits the fabric swatches just right (check out the Designtex showroom if you think I’m embellishing this description). To see one without the other is like reading only the odd-numbered chapters of a book. You’ll get the gist, but you’ll miss the soul of the story.

While NeoCon and Design Days provide the “what,” Chicago Design Week is increasingly providing the “why.” This is where the industry stops looking at its own navel and starts looking at the world around it.

By integrating more deeply with the broader design community — graphic designers, architects, urban planners, and digital artists — the week has taken on an intellectual rigor that was sometimes missing in the “product-product-product” years. Kudos to Cheryl Durst and the entire IIDA team for championing Chicago Design Week. The programming is already starting to tackle the hard questions: How do we design for neurodiversity? How does AI actually manifest in the physical footprint of a building? How do we make “sustainability” something more than a buzzword on a brochure?

If you don’t leave room in your schedule for a few of these talks or off-site installations, you’re leaving Chicago with a suitcase full of brochures but an empty head. You need that extra day to sit in a talk, to argue over coffee and to let the ideas marinate.

And let’s be honest. The best business during June in Chicago doesn’t happen in a showroom anyway. It happens in the hotel lobbies, the rooftop bars in the West Loop and on the sidewalks of Wacker Drive.

When you rush your trip, you kill the serendipity. The most valuable conversation you’ll have this year will be the chance encounter with a CEO at the Soho House or a lead designer at a taco stand, not a scheduled 15-minute presentation. By adding a day or two, you move from transactional mode to relational mode. You give yourself permission to say “yes” when someone asks if you want to go see a pop-up gallery in a basement or grab a late dinner to discuss a partnership.

The industry is currently in a state of massive flux. We are all trying to figure out what the office of the future looks like. Those answers are being hammered out in the late-night hours between the official events.

I get it. It’s not easy. There is a specific kind of “Neo Brain” that sets in by Tuesday afternoon. It’s a blur of fancy fabrics, ergonomics and “collaborative pods.” If you try to cram everything into 48 hours, your brain stops perceiving the nuances. Every task chair starts to look like the one before it.

Consider the extra day your palate cleanser. It’s the day you go back to that one showroom that actually moved the needle for you and walk through Fulton Market without a map. It’s the day you actually look at the architecture of the city that birthed the skyscraper.

We ask our customers to invest in spaces that inspire their employees. We tell them that the environment matters. It’s time we practiced what we preach. You cannot be inspired if you are sprinting through a checklist with a rolling suitcase trailing behind you.

Chicago in June is our Super Bowl, our Davos and our family reunion all rolled into one. Between the historic halls of THE MART, the trendy streets of Fulton Market and the intellectual spark of Chicago Design Week, the city is offering a 360-degree view of where human productivity and design is headed.

The investment of an extra night’s hotel stay is negligible compared to the cost of missing the trend that defines your next three years of sales. Don’t just attend the week — inhabit it. I’ll see you in Chicago. Just don’t expect me to be in a hurry. I’ve booked the extra days. You should too.