Inspiration Magazine

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

A Picture Worth a Few Hundred Words – One Prop Does It All

Wouldn’t it be just wonderful if that was true! Imagine putting a decorative prop in your window and being able to leave it there almost all year —and still get a positive reaction from the shoppers on the street after all that exposure. Not easy—but it can be done. The Jumbo shop, the 2015 gia Global Honoree from Turkey, is an excellent example for how it can be and was…

Introducing the 2016 gia Global Honorees

Of the 25 national gia Global Innovation Award winners of 2015-2016, five stores were selected the most innovative, outstanding retailers on the planet. We check out what makes them so unique and outstanding. The top five stores declared gia Global Innovation Honorees in 2016 were: Lakehouse from Canada, Illums Bolighus from Denmark, Kitchen Shop from Malaysia, K’OOK! from…

gia – Honoring Retail Excellence and Innovation

Every March in Chicago, the IHA Global Innovation Awards (gia) are hosted by the International Housewares Association. The gia awards, which have been dubbed the Oscars of the housewares retail industry, bring together 25 of 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…

Community – the New “C”

It takes more than the two “C”s caught between the “S”s to spell SUCCESS in retail today. It used to be about COMFORT and CUSTOMER CONVENIENCE. It always was somewhat about COST CONTROL. Lately it has been about COMMUNITY SPACES and CONSERVATION—though by going “green” you are serving the community as well. Let’s talk about COMMUNITY SPACES. Anybody who lives in or near New…

Chicago’s Recipe for Culinary Icons – Passion+Inspiration=Today’s Top Chefs

In the culinary world, if you asked most people to name the leading trend-setting U.S. cities the answer would be easy – it follows a line across the United States from New York to Chicago to San Francisco. These cities are often the birthplace of hot new concepts that flow out in waves and trickle down to the masses. And as culinary diversity grows across the country, these…

Inspiring the Path to Purchase: Social Media Influencers

Meet Melissa Maker, the woman behind the Clean My Space YouTube channel, and Beth Le Manach, the woman at the helm of YouTube’s Entertaining with Beth. Millions of people view these clever cleaning and cooking queens online, making them some of today’s top social media influencers and YouTube stars. There is one obvious thing that Melissa Maker and Beth Le Manach have in…

Sweet Dreams Are Made of These

Baking makes a home feel cozy and safe, producing a caring atmosphere full of love and nurturing. Because baking makes those who bake happy and those around them grateful, Manuela Kjeilen started baking more. It was her life’s passion, although at first she didn’t know it. Manuela baked because she wanted to give something – everything – to her family. And when that family…

Calming Trends for Fall/Winter 2016

Trend Bible is a home and interiors-dedicated forecasting agency working with leading international brands to help them understand the future of their market. They forecast future trends in the behavior of consumers in a two-to-five year timeframe and analyze how this will impact the home environment. What will be influencing design for the home in Fall/Winter…

Back to Basics: The Essentials of Success

To be innovative and successful in today's complex marketplace, housewares manufacturers need to focus their strategy, listen to the consumer, deliver more value, enable creativity and experience and engage consumers in new ways, IHA's lifestyle trends forecaster Tom Mirabile told attendees at the 2015 International Home + Housewares Show. “You have to ask yourself: ‘Am I…

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