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!

Reason to Cheer? Depends on Where You Live

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce polled small business owners about the state of the economy during the third quarter last fall and found that most were optimistic about increasing revenue in 2018. Most also said their local economies were strong. About one-quarter of those businesses surveyed were retailers. Increased confidence in local economies and the health of small…

Le Petite Gourmet Shoppe

Location: La Grange, Texas Founded: 2006 Owner: Donella Dopslaug-Cernosek Square footage: 7,200, including 5,000 sq. ft. of retail space La Grange, Texas, is a small place with a big kitchenware store. At 7,200 sq. ft., Le Petite Gourmet Shoppe has more square feet of retail space than there are people in the town. While owner Donella Dopslaug-Cernosek says that…

Being Smarter About Smart Home

by Joe Derochowski, The NPD Group In the first 11 months of 2017, U.S. dollar sales of home automation products increased 40 percent, with strong growth across all device types, according to The NPD Group’s Retail Tracking Service. Home automation products were among the fastest selling items during the 2017 holiday season – over Thanksgiving week and Cyber Week, home…

Technological Advancements in IoT Transforming the Way Consumers Interact With Their Products

By Dina Abdelrazik Dina Abdelrazik, research analyst at Parks Associates, recently sat down with Research and Markets to discuss technological advancements in the Internet of Things (IoT) and how they’re transforming the way consumers interact with their products. The Connected Lifestyle How have technological advancements affected the adoption, usage and retention of the…

Speak, Swipe, Smile: How Virtual Assistants Are No Longer Just About Voice

By Chris Albrecht Amazon’s Alexa plays a central role in my family’s morning routine: she tells us the weather, plays the radio and sets timers so we can catch the bus. Alexa is great for simple tasks, but she and other smart speakers stumble when it comes to more complicated requests. That’s just a limitation of having only a voice and speaker interface. But the way we…

Housewares Are Becoming Connected. Is Your Company Ready?

By Michael Wolf The housewares industry is changing, but I wouldn’t blame you for missing it. That’s because industry evolutions happen subtly and slowly and, as a result, it’s often easy to miss the big shifts. Most of us, after all, are busy doing our job. But the old adage “the days are long but the years are short” applies just as much to market evolutions as well as…

Cleaning Up: How Robot Vacuums Work and What’s Next

By Carley Knobloch In 2002 when they hit the scene, robot vacuums were the stuff of curiosity and silly videos of cats who climb on them and sail around the house. They’re not the stuff of viral videos anymore: With major technological advancements, boosted power and prices falling, robot vacuum cleaners are becoming a mainstay in American homes. A recent study, in fact,…

Home Smart Home

By Michelle Hespe Carley Knobloch knows a thing or two about smart homes: She’s consulted with HGTV on their annual HGTV Smart Home build for years, and is a regular tech contributor on the Today Show. Her home, a blend of California cool and high tech, was just featured in Good Housekeeping. To Carley, “A truly smart home is as beautiful as it is intelligent — the gadgets…

Software is the Heart of the Smart Kitchen Experts Tell Housewares Audience

Seven years ago, Groupon and LinkedIn investor Marc Andreessen said something incredibly important – something that, at the time, few people really understood the gravity of. Andreesen claimed: “Software is eating the world.” Fast forward to 2018, listening to talk about the future of smart kitchens, his comment certainly rings true; however, now one could probably take the…