Education

Learn about educational events, informative webinars and special reports, designed and prepared to help members stay up-to- date on current business topics, trends and issues!

Retailers Apply Tips, Info Learned At International Home + Housewares Show

For many independent retailers, the International Home + Housewares Show last March wrapped up the trade show season and with it the chance to meet with vendors, hobnob with other store owners and view exciting product trends. Back at home, retailers are resetting displays, reviewing product assortments and reflecting on how interactions during the International Home +…

How Mirai Became a Wake-Up Call For the Smart Home Industry

In October 2016, the technology world was jolted awake when millions of poorly secured consumer devices were compromised and subsequently used in a malicious attack on popular web services like Soundcloud and Twitter. This incident, which came to be known as the Mirai botnet attack, utilized a form of malware to take control of devices and effectively turn them into an army…

The Future of How (and What) We Eat

As connectivity transforms the way we live, work and shop, there is a heavy focus on technology’s role in our daily lives. The internet pushed us into a global economy, and the Internet of Things will connect us to our stuff and to the people who make our stuff. But what about food? We’ve explored how kitchen appliances are evolving and how grocers and retailers are shifting…

The Living Kitchen: How Technology Will Become Part of the “Fabric” of Our Homes

By Ashley Daigneault and Michael Wolf In 2015, Swedish furniture giant IKEA released a video that outlined their vision for what the kitchen of the future might look like. The IKEA 2025 Concept Kitchen looked like something out of the movie “Minority Report,” where machine vision, built-in sensors and artificial intelligence (AI) combined to make surfaces come alive with…

Learning to Cook in the Modern Age

By Carley Knobloch You might not be unboxing a robot butler this decade, but there’s a good chance you’ll be adding a robotic appliance to your kitchen. With ovens that recognize what’s inside and tell you how to cook it, slow cookers that are controlled via app and appliances that stop when your meal is “just right,” will home cooks go the way of telegraph operators? Here’s…

Tax Reform: What You Need to Know about the Border Adjustment Tax

Not since 1986 has the U.S. Tax Code undergone fundamental reform. But now, with Republicans controlling both the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate, and President Trump anxious for a win on one of his biggest promises from last year’s campaign, major efforts are underway to redefine our nation’s outdated and overly complex tax code to make the United States more…

IoT-Powered Business Models Set to Reinvent the Appliance Business

By Michael Wolf Over the past few years, appliance manufacturers have embraced the Internet of Things (IoT), making their products more connected and adding new consumer-pleasing features such as app control and notifications. However, while neat new capabilities have garnered buzz and helped raise consumer interest, these are minor compared to the resulting shifts the…

A Cheat Sheet to Smart Home Platforms

By Michael Wolf and Ashley Daigneault For over two decades, a variety of companies and industry consortiums have worked to create standards and platforms to help devices and services work better together in the connected home. Many of these technologies that are now part of making the smart home work have become household names: from long- established and pervasive…

Alexa, Show Me the Future: The Emerging Interfaces of The Smart Home

By Michael Wolf For most of my adult life, doing things around the home meant pushing buttons and turning dials. In fact, for almost everyone who isn’t a teenager or younger, the process of cooking, making coffee or doing laundry meant using mechanical controls. But that’s beginning to change. Touch screens have become massively popular over the past decade, and more…