Inspiration Magazine: Innovation

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

Going “GREEN” in Stores

There is hardly a single home or business publication that one picks up today that doesn’t have an article or two about “greening and sustainability”. Those two words are ubiquitous: seen, heard and talked about everywhere. More American U.S. consumers are looking for “green” products and green products sold in green environments. For store designers, the goal is to create and…

Introducing the 2013 gia Global Honorees

The five top stores declared gia Global Honorees 2013 were: Linen Chest from Canada, Quality Living from Italy, Kookpunt from the Netherlands, Taylor Road Homewares from New Zealand and Cooks of Crocus Hill from the United States. Quality Living also won the Martin M. Pegler Award for Excellence in Visual Merchandising. Quality and Service, Guaranteed Around 50 years ago,…

gia – Honoring Global Retailing Excellence

Every year the International Housewares Association (IHA) welcomes retailers deemed the best in their home country to Chicago, where they compete on a global stage in the IHA Global Innovation Awards 2013 (gia) program. This year there were 23 national gia winners from 22 countries, all representing the very top of home and housewares retailing. The gia program was born…

The Sights, Smells and Sounds of Shopping…

...Increasing Impulse Shopping If visual merchandising or display is vital anywhere in the retail space, it must be where impulse items are being offered. The whole concept of “impulse shopping” is based on attracting the shopper to a product that she did not come into the store to buy. It means, “waving a flag” in front of her – making her stop, take notice of, maybe try or…

Introducing…Martin M. Pegler

With over 60 years experience, our legendary columnist, Martin M. Pegler, will keep you dreaming and make sure you’re at the forefront of all things visual merchandising. “How does one get to be the ‘guru’ of an industry – an authority that is rarely questioned, but often honored?” muses Pegler. “It helps if there’s longevity,” he says. Indeed. Pegler has been actively…