The countdown to The Inspired Home Show 2025 has begun.
There is a litany of reasons to attend the milestone 125th housewares show since its Chicago debut in 1939: more than 1,600 exhibitors, thousands of new and improved products, special exhibits showcasing design innovation, insightful industry education, networking opportunities and more.
The show, like the retail home and housewares business it serves, continues evolving to bring more selection to buyers seeking new ways to extend value to their customers. Visitors to The Inspired Home Show, March 2-4, at Chicago’s McCormick Place, will find the new Travel Gear + Luggage Expo, a first-time Pet Product Pavilion in partnership with the American Pet Products Association and a new Candle Pavilion in partnership with the National Candle Association. Such new exhibits invite buyers at the show to think outside their respective boxes at a time when doing so can be the difference between wins and losses in today’s fast-evolving, hyper-competitive marketplace.
The Inspired Home Show presents a true vista of the home and housewares business opportunity. It’s a forum where upstart suppliers get to share the stage with the industry’s most established players, where retailers can renew relations with a wide array of key suppliers while making surprising, new connections that could very well drive future business.
It is a fair wager that, like at most of the 124 shows that have preceded this one, there are not-so-hidden gems to be found along the McCormick Place North and South Building aisles for those who are really looking. Such products one day could reside on the timeline of important show breakthroughs for a resilient industry that staunchly invites and rewards new ideas to improve how people live their lives and how this business progresses.
If you are in the business of making home and housewares decisions, it should never be viewed as a luxury to set aside a few days to shop and otherwise participate directly in the industry’s largest annual B2B marketplace on this side of the globe. Such participation could be especially advantageous at a time when the business has been primed for a new, extended period of growth in spite of the seemingly never-ending hurdles rising to pressure such advancement.
To that point, it is always disappointing to learn of suppliers that don’t exhibit at the show hosting meetings and product previews in Chicago hotels and venues away from McCormick Place during the show. Doing so with the intent to pull buyers from the show floor is not just a disservice to those companies that made the commitment to exhibit; it is a disservice to the buyers that come to Chicago in the first place because of the show and its exhibitors.
Perhaps the notion that participating directly in a trade show as a demonstration of industry scope, strength and unity is a sentimental bygone that holds less sway in today’s costly, brutally competitive marketplace. However, there may be no more salient proof of The Inspired Home Show’s enduring high value to a wide scope of the industry than a supplier that sets up shop outside the exhibit halls to take advantage of so many buyers in town because of what’s inside the halls. Buyers, by attending such offsite meetings or not, can cast the most decisive votes when it comes to optimizing their show attendance, supporting the constituents that make the show the draw that it is and perhaps even encouraging offsite suppliers to exhibit at future shows.
A few dedicated days inside McCormick Place can make a real difference.
