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Design Stars – Design Highlights from the gia Product Design Awards

Discover Design, the premier design destination at the International Home + Housewares Show, offers a collection of companies showcasing the latest products, product design, and collections found in housewares. Exhibitors are based on recommendations from and approval by the retail and design community. At the 2016 Show, several exhibitors from Discover Design were selected…

Inspire Your Customers Now to Create Sales in the Future

As a retailer, I want to live in a world where my existence contributes not only to the lives of my customers but to the greater good. I don’t want to live in a world where I am perceived as pushing “stuff” on customers who don’t need it. This most certainly should not be the case, but instead, inspire customers to create sales in the future. Decor that is more than skin…

Living the Dream

If Patricia Velez embarks on a new venture, her passion is the project’s driving force. Inspiring others has also always been paramount to her, and so her latest incarnation—as the founder and CEO of Ambiente Living —has meant bringing these two facets of her approach to life and work together. There are now 30 Ambiente Gourmet stores in Colombia and two Ambiente Living…

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…