Last updated on June 6th, 2016 at 04:05 pm
The International Home + Housewares Show is now under way in Chicago and will continue through Tuesday.
The International Housewares Association (IHA) is celebrating the 116th show with more than 61,000 people from more than 120 countries in attendance, including 22,000 buyers.
“It is the world’s shopping place for housewares,” Perry Reynolds, VP of marketing and trade development for the IHA, tells The Shelby Report’s Geoff Welch. “We’ve been doing this for a while. It is a tremendous opportunity for anybody in the home goods business to find every product they’re looking to find.”
Reynolds says more independent retailers are interested in housewares.
“It is a product that doesn’t take away from anything else in the business and it is running at a significantly higher profitability than any other product they have in their stores,” he says. “We get some 3,000 people who say that they’re independent retailers, specialty retailers at the show. We think that there’s a tremendous opportunity here for them and we are providing it for some of the smaller, more focused independent supermarkets. We think there’s an opportunity for them to grow, not just their sales, but also their profits.”
The IHA would be happy to speak with independent grocers on a one-to-one basis about the value of the show, particularly to smaller supermarkets.
“If it works for large supermarket chains, which are here in big numbers, it should work for independents,” Reynolds says. “The trip should more than pay for itself.”
Reynolds has grocery business experience, having worked for Grand Union Supermarkets. He also was employed at Richway/Federated Department Stores and with an Ohio distributor.
“I certainly understand on a firsthand basis the importance of general merchandise in a supermarket, because that’s exactly what I did and it was a significant part of our profitability at Grand Union,” he says.
For more information, visit www.housewares.org.
