The countdown to The Inspired Home Show 2022 has begun. The show starts in just eight days. Eight days!
It took three years of waiting, but this will mark my 30th show through all its evolutionary name changes during those three decades: International Housewares Show, International Home + Housewares Show, and now, for the first time, The Inspired Home Show.
What hasn’t changed, despite a pandemic pause that sometimes seems to have changed everything, is the paramount importance of the show as the largest North American, in-person B2B marketplace for a wide scope of home and housewares products.
Will this year’s show, March 5-7, be smaller and feel different than pre-pandemic editions? Yes, it will, and there is no need to rehash the obvious reasons. What we need to do is acknowledge 1,000-plus exhibitors, including more than 300 first-timers, resolved to return to an in-person showcase of home and housewares business engagement and opportunity that can never be replicated on a computer or smartphone screen.
What’s more, retail registration for the show — encompassing major chains, mid-tier operators, e-commerce platforms, independents and even internationals — has been on a steady upswing the past few weeks. That underscores not just easing travel restrictions and growing safety confidence, but also a real thirst among buyers for new products, new vendors and new trend discovery across many categories in one location that has gone unquenched for too long.
One thing is certain for exhibitors, retailers and other industry affiliates making the commitment to attend next week’s Inspired Home Show: They will be there to work. Expect myriad stories about exhibitors opening business with retailers for the first time. Or retailers enlisting new vendors they never previously knew or considered. All because they chose to converge on Chicago’s McCormick Place for three days in March.
That’s what this show enables. Always has. Always will.
The doors to The Inspired Home Show 2022 finally open Saturday, March 5 at 10 a.m. After they close Monday, March 7 at 5:30 p.m., the full measure of the show’s value should become even more evident from subsequent follow-ups to inspiration and collaboration begun inside McCormick Place.
I’ve never been more excited about attending the industry’s most important trade show, and I’ve been to 29 of them. My 30th visit might feel different, but I expect it will be worth the wait — for me and for the home and housewares business.
