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!

Trends: Tracking the Generations

Independent retailers are always challenged to gauge what their customers want, and with the wide range of consumer age groups out there—all with different aspirations and needs—that challenge is always changing. Researchers and marketers, too, struggle to figure this out. A couple of recent studies from two research groups shed a bit of light on the differences between the…

Retail Profile: The Common Housefly

Location: Black Mountain, N.C. Owners: Michael and Marcia Liss Founded: 2005 Square footage: 1,500 sq. ft. Rent or Own: Own Michael Liss likes to joke that his store, The Common Housefly, has 3,000 square feet of product “crammed” into 1,500-square feet of space. That sort of abundance lends well to the store’s tagline “A Toy Store for Foodies.” Or as Liss describes it a…

Stats: Experiences Drive Trends

People aren’t buying products, they are buying experiences. At least that’s the opinion of Tom Mirabile, the International Housewares Association’s trend expert, who spoke during the recent 2019 International Home + Housewares Show. Mirabile’s annual keynote, “Top Trend 2019: New Consumer Insights and How to Thrive in the Retail Revolution,” brought up a number of points about…

Trends: Making Food Safe at Home

It is great to teach cooking classes, hold demos and inspire home cooks to purchase cookware, gadgets and other fun kitchen tools, but as anyone who has worked in a serious restaurant kitchen knows, food safety is the first priority. Professionals in the food service industry learn how to best make food safe for their patrons, but how much of that gets through to consumers…

International Home + Housewares Show Changes Name

Next year, the International Housewares Association is changing the name of its flagship trade show from the International Home + Housewares Show to The Inspired Home Show, IHA’s Global Home + Housewares Market. The change, which was announced at the recently completed 2019 International Home + Housewares Show, is part of the Association’s expansion of The Inspired Home…

Retail Profile: Artichoke

Location: Cincinnati, Ohio Owners: Karen and Brad Hughes Founded: 2016 Square Footage: 883 sq. ft. Own or Rent: Own If you can’t shop at Artichoke in person, you can visit via a virtual reality version of the Cincinnati store. Available on the Artichoke website, the virtual store allows customers to get acquainted before they come in, something owners Brad and Karen…

Trends: Snacking Still in Favor

Despite eating trends ranging from intermittent fasting to advice to “eat three square meals,” at the end of the day, Americans like to snack. That’s according to research firm The NPD Group, which studies these things and has released its Future of Snacking report. And apparently there is a future in snacking. “Snack foods continue to evolve both as between-meal snacks and…