What a busy fall it has been already, though the leaves are still green here in North Carolina.

With Las Vegas and High Point so close together, many of us in the home furnishings business have had to find a new pattern to our workflow and workloads, and it hasn't been an easy run, especially as many of us are operating with smaller staffs and much leaner budgets.

We have all been tasked over the last year to figure out how to do more with less.

In our personal lives, we have all had to figure out how to do more with less, too. Even for those of us who are among the lucky ones who still have steady work and a good paycheck, the idea that the other shoe may be about to drop has forced many of us to make some cuts in our lifestyles — just in case.

And that syndrome has obviously had a very direct impact on our businesses. As consumers figure out how to do more with less, our products are often the first to get bumped off the "have to have" list, because, really, no one HAS to have anything we produce in this business. I'm not telling you anything you don't already know.

But I always try to look at the positive side. So, I'm declaring that in many ways less is more. Here's how I see it:

First: We have managed to survive. We continue to fight, and have found strengths we didn't know we had. I know that for me, there is a certain swell of pride in achieving what looked to be impossible;

Next: We have gotten creative. Not only are we coming up with new ideas, but running lean means that you have to be creative in order to make things happen. The same-old, same-old just doesn't work any more, and we are taking teamwork to all new levels;

Finally: We have gotten smarter at what we do. Because we simply had no choice if we were going to make all these issues and all this market coverage happen.

Speaking of market, a look at this season's new products leads me to believe that home accents vendors are working smarter and more creatively, too, because there is a definite freshness to the market introductions this season.

The less is looking like a whole lot more in terms of products for the fall.

Retailers: I know you have had to do more with less too — I'd love to hear what you have learned from it.

See you at market.