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Trends: Consumers Love Snacks

According to the NPD Group’s most recent survey, consumers love snacks! And why not. They like tasty, rich snacks, according to the NPD Group’s “Future of Snacking” report, which says consumers “are giving themselves permission to enjoy indulgent snacks.” For retailers with cooking programs, the trend is an interesting one. Why not consider adding classes on how to whip up…

CBD Products Emerge at Retail

While you still can’t order a CBD latte at Starbucks, the market for CBD (Cannabidiol) products is opening and already on the shelves of small retailers, as well as shown during the 2019 International Home + Housewares show last March. Cannabidiol is the non-THC part of the marijuana plant and can be seen in such housewares products as air diffusers, CBD oil sprays and…

Retail Profile: Sparrow Hawk Cookware

Location: Colorado Springs, Colo. Owner: Sam Eppley Founded: 1979 Square footage: 4,000 sq. ft. Own or rent: Own Sam Eppley knows what makes his store special: customer service. “We have a ton of employees who have been with us at least five years and one lady has been here for 20 years,” he says. Eppley himself has been around for 41 years, “so there is a lot of…

Stats: NPD Details What is Selling at Retail

The NPD Group’s home division presented its sixth annual industry performance awards during the International Home & Housewares Show this past March. Awards were given to small appliance and housewares (non-electric) brands with the largest increase in U.S. market share in 2018, compared to 2017, according to dollar sales from NPD’s Retail Tracking Service. Three…

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…

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…