Inspiration Magazine: Innovation

Useful tips and resources prepared by business, industry and design experts to help retailers grow their businesses!

gia – Celebration of Retail Excellence and Innovation

Every March in Chicago, the IHA Global Innovation Awards (gia) are hosted by the International Housewares Association. The gia awards, “the Oscars® of the housewares industry”, bring together the world’s most innovative retailers, all having been voted as the best in their country. The IHA Global Innovation Awards program was created to celebrate excellence and innovation in…

Show to Sell: Cross Merchandising

by Martin M. Pegler Visual Merchandising is really a very simple concept to understand. “Visual” refers to sight and “showing” while “Merchandising” is about “selling”. WE—people who believe in and are practitioners of VM—believe that it is very important to show your products in a way that makes the shopping process simple—easy—convenient for the shoppers. It is important…

Recycling and Display Props

By Martin M. Pegler Props, I would imagine, is short for “properties” and “properties” can be anything that adds something to a scene, a setting, a display. If we were to look around us, we would see we are standing in the center of a field of display props: from the furniture in the room, the plants, the unused rolls of wallpaper, the tableware, the collection of pots and…

A Cut Above

The Chopping Block is Chicago's largest recreational cooking school and gourmet retail store, and yet so much more to so many people. From cooking demonstrations for newbies flexing their cooking wings to hands-on cooking classes where good home cooks can advance from their comfort zone, The Chopping Block is out to get everyone cooking confidently. And for those who love…

2017 gia Global Honoree – Loft

Michelle Hespe speaks to Mr. Satoru Iimura, Executive Director of Loft — a chain of retail stores in Japan that became one of the five Global Honorees at this year’s IHA Global Innovation Awards (gia) at Chicago’s International Home + Housewares Show. Loft was celebrating more than its gia win in Chicago this year. “2017 marks 30 years since the first Loft store opened in…

2017 gia Global Honoree – Rustan’s

Mr. Donnie Tantoco, President of the Philippines luxury retailer, Rustan’s, speaks to Michelle Hespe about becoming one of five Global Honorees at the 2016-2017 IHA Global Innovation Awards (gia) in Chicago. It’s the second time that this leading business has been the recipient of a gia in the past decade. With passion, forward thinking and dedicated drive, in 1952, the…

And The Melody Lingers On

By: Martin M. Pegler Imagine it is almost Christmas and the store is filled with happy holiday shoppers. Do I hear music playing? YES!! And probably the music in retail stores is music of the season—like “White Christmas”—or “I’ll be Home For Christmas” or maybe even some Christmas carols. Why the music and why these familiar melodies? Because music “soothes the soul,” is…

2017 gia Global Honoree – Borough Kitchen

Michelle Hespe catches up with two Canadian friends who have managed to create a passionate retail-based community, Borough Kitchen, that all started within London’s Borough Market, with cooking and homewares firmly at its heart. Taking the step from being successful bankers to the owners of a happening kitchen retailer in a thousand-year-old London food market doesn’t seem…

2017 gia Global Honoree – Potten & Pannen – Staněk

Michelle Hespe catches up with one of the five 2017 gia global honorees, Pavel Staněk—Co-founder and President of the highly innovative Potten & Pannen – Staněk in the Czech Republic. The gia Global Honoree award-winning Potten & Pannen store is a KitchenAid concept store and a gourmet cooking academy based in the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague. “Our grounding…