Inspiration Magazine: Inspiration

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

Inspiring and Expressing Colors: Defining the Essential Trends

by Michelle Hespe Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute and world-renowned color guru, speaks to Inspiration Magazine about how retailers can learn to spot emerging color trends, understand color “moods” and grasp how best to use them to their brand’s advantage. Leatrice has just released her 10th book on color — The Complete Color…

Making a Mark: Create & Captivate on Social Media

Michelle Hespe speaks to Melissa Maker about growing your brand’s presence through five easy ‘social’ steps that you can take right now. As a retailer, you know that brand is everything. If you don’t have a great brand story, potential customers won’t stop, listen and look at what you are offering, and the sales won’t happen. It’s that simple. So how can you be heard…

Bound to Inspire

Seven years after launching popular housewares brand, StoreBound, the company’s forward-thinking CEO, Evan Dash chats with Michelle Hespe. Evan Dash meets me at the International Home + Housewares Show in Chicago with a big smile and the firm, friendly handshake he is known for. It’s been a decade since he left Macy’s, where he was the Senior VP for Home, and it’s been seven…

Sweetly Connected

by Michelle Hespe We catch up with Paul Lowe, otherwise known as “Sweet Paul” to talk about how he injects emotion into his website, magazine, blog and online retail business. Many people have the dream of doing what they love as a living, but Paul Lowe – aka Sweet Paul – literally takes the cake. Sweet Paul has made a living off the things he loves — cooking, baking…

Understanding Influencers

The tools of the trade for retailers have irrevocably changed. Today, it’s not good enough to sell great products and have great staff. Today, social commentary is word of mouth, and influencers can provide a route to gaining more traction in a world where the union of technology and social media is king. Let’s start with the basics and work our way up to a more complex…

Inspiring the Industry: Henrik Peter Reisby Nielsen

gia Expert Juror and CEO of ReisbyConsult, Henrik Peter Reisby Nielsen, is inspiring the retail industry. Michelle Hespe finds out how he does it. Henrik Peter Reisby Nielsen would never use the word “bored” because he is continually entertained by how much inspiration there is around him. He has drawn from this inspiration to carve out a career for himself in retail,…

Coloring Carefully

Henrik Peter Reisby Nielsen on using color on website Henrik is the CEO and Founder of CleverBinder, a productivity service that connects retailers and their customers via truly innovative software solutions. He also owns ReisbyConsult, a consulting company for retailers on design, color palattes, innovation and new technology. “It takes a lot of effort, knowledge and…

Setting up for Success with Social Media

When Melissa Maker looked critically at her Toronto-based cleaning business in 2006, she knew that with the internet and social media cementing itself in people’s daily lives and with YouTube being recognized as more than just a platform for musicians, she could leverage what was happening in this brave new world of technology to increase her brand visibility and ultimately,…

Inspiring the Industry – Leatrice Eiseman

For anyone involved in retail or a creative industry, or simply anyone with a love of color, Pantone and Leatrice (Lee) Eiseman need no introduction. The author of nine books on color, a color consultant to industry and a regular speaker around the globe at retail trade shows, as well as the originator of color training programs held twice a year, Eiseman has been inspiring…