“We hit it out of the park this year,” Kisner, co-founder and managing partner of Market Maker Events, the producer of the Southwest Flooring Market, told FCNews.
Ninety minutes into day one and the Southwest Flooring Market had already surpassed the previous year’s attendance figures. What a difference a year makes. Unlike 2025, when a snow/ice storm kept many attendees away, this year’s group was welcomed by sunshine and 80-degree temperatures—weather that reflected the optimistic feeling inside the Loews Arlington Hotel.
“By 10:30 on the first morning we had already registered more people than we did all last year—400 attendees in the first 90 minutes,” Kisner said. “The sense I got is there are a lot of people who are more optimistic about the economy than I have heard in a long time. Last year it was tariffs, tariffs, tariffs. This year people are more optimistic about an improving economy.”…