Veronika Miller Looks Ahead

After 15 years of building Designhounds into a global community, Veronika Miller is going deeper—and betting that High Point can become North America’s true center of design.

About seven years ago, on my first trip to KBIS, I became aware of a blonde force of energy I would come to know as “V.” Designers hung on her every word, then swirled around her afterward, eager for a moment of her time. Many called themselves Designhounds, members of the influential community Veronika Miller had created. I was fascinated by her pull.

Years later, she invited me to speak at a Designhounds event in Napa, where I experienced firsthand what V does so well: bring a carefully chosen group together, give them meaningful access, and turn product education into something immersive and memorable.

Grateful to be in her orbit, it wasn’t until December 2025, when Veronika came to High Point with her husband, Kyle, that we finally connected one-on-one. Since then, the once distant beacon has become a colleague and friend, and I find myself closer to the ideas, energy and output I had admired from afar.
Thus…it gives me great pleasure to share: What is V seeing now?

Part of that pleasure is that her perception of High Point has shifted and she sees it as a place that just might have what it takes to become a true epicenter of design.

Veronika Miller has taken designers around the world in search of great design—Milan, Paris, London, and many points in between. And she also has a long history with High Point. She points to COHAB, 313 Space, Congdon Yards, vintage and art resources, and the growing activity outside of Market promoted by HPxD as evidence of something larger taking shape.

What intrigues her is the potential for a year-round High Point built around a truly blended design ecosystem—one that crosses boundaries the industry has traditionally imposed upon itself: large and small, corporate and independent, furniture and furnishings, kitchen and bath, technology and materials, and potentially residential, hospitality and commercial design.

“High Point is like no other place in the U.S. in that there’s already this extraordinary concentration of manufacturers, showrooms, designers, makers, craftspeople, media and industry knowledge,” she says. “And increasingly, there’s a community developing outside of the traditional Market structure. Why couldn’t that become the North American center of design?”

BREAKING DOWN WALLS

For Miller, a trained interior designer who has also opened a showroom and repped brands, one of the most important pieces of that evolution is already underway—the crossover between the kitchen-and-bath and home-furnishings worlds. Their separation never made much sense to her.

“A designer doesn’t walk into a house and say, ‘I’m only going to think about the furniture,’” she says. “The industry still organizes itself into categories that the actual project doesn’t respect. Kitchen and bath over here. Furniture over there. Technology somewhere else. It all has to live together.”

She is encouraged by what is happening in High Point, from NKBA’s presence at Broad Hall to the growing mix at 313 Space with kitchen-and-bath brands such as Monogram, Isla Porter, House of Rohl and Thompson, exploring new ways and places to exhibit.

Miller imagines the crossover going further. Existing furniture showrooms, for example, could potentially integrate kitchens, appliances, plumbing, hardware and other products into their environments, becoming a satellite exhibition space – creating new kinds of collaborations while allowing designers to experience products in context.

The exchange, she believes, could benefit both sides: home furnishings brands can learn from the technical education, business strategies and channel development of the kitchen-and-bath industry, and K+B brands can benefit from High Point’s fluency in storytelling and the emotional side of design.

“Every time we remove another one of those artificial industry walls,” Miller says, “High Point gets closer to the possibility of becoming a true North American center of design.”

FROM REACH TO RELEVANCE

In 2011, Miller had an idea: gather a group of designers and design bloggers, immerse them in a great creative experience and let their audiences follow along. She took 17 of them to London—at a time when “influencer” wasn’t yet part of the industry vernacular—and essentially told them to go find cool British design.

Seventeen individual perspectives, collectively reaching hundreds of thousands of design-curious followers, caught the attention of manufacturers, trade shows and design organizations. More tours followed. Sponsorships followed. What began as BlogTour evolved into Designhounds and, more than 85 tours, retreats, conferences and brand events later, it is a far-reaching community of design professionals connected by curiosity, content and a desire to learn.

Fifteen years in, however, Miller felt it was time to take stock.

Late last year, she and her team asked: What’s still working? What truly matters? And in a particularly challenging moment for the design business, where could we make a meaningful difference?

Meeting and soul-searching kept leading back to three issues: noise, education and fragmentation.
Noise is the communication problem,and the result of designers and manufacturers being surrounded by more content, email, social media and product launches than ever before, with AI only accelerating the volume.

Education is the knowledge problem. Products are becoming increasingly sophisticated while opportunities to really understand them are shrinking.

“A designer can see 500 products at a trade show and deeply understand almost none of them,” Miller says. “That becomes a real business problem when you’re specifying a $20,000 appliance, complicated lighting controls, architectural hardware or a shower system that somebody actually has to install.”

Fragmentation is the industry problem which reflects back on those artificial divisions Miller sees beginning to break down in High Point.
Voila…the Designhounds team had found their new mantra: “Less marketing. More mattering.”

GOING DEEPER

Miller is still looking to fill the room with designers, but with more meaning for all. One expression of that is Designhounds Bootcamps, a localized take on the immersive factory tours and product experiences that were a hallmark of the early Designhounds trips. Instead of taking 20 designers to a factory in Germany to understand a product, Miller is bringing that depth of learning closer to home.

The format is intentionally small—typically 25 to 30 design professionals—and decidedly hands-on. “Brands get real time with them,” Miller says. “We open things up. We touch things. We ask questions. We talk about installation. We talk about specifications. Sometimes we talk about what goes wrong.”
Designhounds works with vetted Local Market Partners who know their own design communities and can bring the right mix of people into the room. Miller is quick to point out that she’s less interested in social-media numbers than something harder to quantify: trust.

“We’re not looking for the person with the biggest social following,” she says. “We’re looking for the person who can invite 25 excellent design professionals into a room and they’ll come because they trust them.”

It’s another indication of how Miller sees the design landscape changing. Fifteen years ago, Designhounds demonstrated the power of reach. Today, she is equally interested in the power of depth.
“Bootcamps came from hearing designers say, ‘I don’t need another cocktail party. Teach me something,’” she says.

After launching the format in Brooklyn earlier this summer, Designhounds is bringing a Bootcamp to Congdon Yards in High Point on Friday, October 16, featuring BLANCO sinks and faucets, Häcker German Kitchens and BlueStar appliances, and HPxD is the local partner. The education is free for designers.

Later that evening, she and her collaborators will host what they’re unofficially calling the Designhounds Relaunch—a community celebration and introduction to the next iteration of the organization. After years of taking designers out into the world, Miller is now equally interested in creating opportunities for deeper learning and connection closer to home.

“After 15 years,” Miller says, “it feels appropriate to start the next chapter in High Point.”