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IHA’s blog features informative posts written to keep the housewares industry educated and informed about key strategic issues and IHA member services.

Retail Profile: Forté Coffee

Location: St. Joseph, Mich. Founded: 2018 Co-owners: Brian and Barbara Maynard Square footage: 1,850 sq ft Brian Maynard’s love affair with coffee goes back to his childhood. That coffee passion began with the influence of his father Del, who, Maynard says, “always had a cup of coffee in his hand and would wake up in the middle of the night to…

Stats: Food Trend Influencers

If you’ve ever wondered why kombucha has become popular, you may also wonder how healthy food trends get started. Not surprisingly, a new study has found that social media plays an increasingly big role in influencing consumer decisions about the foods they eat and the brands they buy. But other factors come into play as well. According to the consumer insights platform Suzy,…

Trends: Tracking the Generations

Independent retailers are always challenged to gauge what their customers want, and with the wide range of consumer age groups out there—all with different aspirations and needs—that challenge is always changing. Researchers and marketers, too, struggle to figure this out. A couple of recent studies from two research groups shed a bit of light on the differences between the…

Sculpting a Community

Above and beyond being a retailer, S-Kultur is a cooking school, a café/bar, an experience, a community and a homey place to indulge in some of the best things in life. by Michelle Hespe German gia winner and 2019 Global Honoree S-Kultur epitomizes the approach to retailing that stores across the world are working hard to achieve in order to retain loyal customers.…

Jumbled Joy

by Michelle Hespe The owner of Australian IHA Global Innovation Awards (gia) Global Honoree JUMBLED has always focused on choosing the right products to create sparks of joy in an enchanting place that has a true sense of soul and community. When it came to setting up her now thriving business JUMBLED, Pip Brett listened to some sage advice from her mother, who is also a…

Retail Profile: The Common Housefly

Location: Black Mountain, N.C. Owners: Michael and Marcia Liss Founded: 2005 Square footage: 1,500 sq. ft. Rent or Own: Own Michael Liss likes to joke that his store, The Common Housefly, has 3,000 square feet of product “crammed” into 1,500-square feet of space. That sort of abundance lends well to the store’s tagline “A Toy Store for Foodies.” Or as Liss describes it a…

Perfectly Porland

Porland of Turkey, one of the five gia Global Honorees this year, has a long, rich and colorful history. We look into what makes this manufacturer and retailer of porcelain stand out from the rest. by Michelle Hespe Porland’s logo features a ballerina executing a perfect pirouette. This elegant symbol conveys both beauty and strength, reflecting the grounding philosophy…

April Currency Outlook

In their April 2019 Currency Outlook report, Tempus, an exchange rate and global payments company, provides a detailed report including the following topics and sections: In Brief The Federal Reserve did not increase interest rates, however, the USD is up half of a percent The global economy is slower than the U.S. economy, hence the better performance of the USD…