Themes noted among the 389 exhibitor booths on the floor of the 2018 edition of Licensing International Expo were as varied as the product that represented them. They included the continued growth of collectible toy brands as licensed properties, merchandise with a message, properties tied to … [Read more...]
Fancy Food Gets Ugly
The Summer Fancy Food Show is the largest specialty food-industry event in North America. Held at New York’s Javits Center, this year’s show provided a snapshot of upcoming food trends. Food and licensing expert Leigh Ann Schwarzkopf of Project Partners Network identified one of those trends as … [Read more...]
Interviews at Dallas Market Center — June 2018
What do you get when you combine a floral-trends expert with a home-décor trends expert? The answer: Grow With Us, a day of education and inspiration sponsored by Dallas Market Center, which took place on June 20th. Led by uBloom's J Schwanke and The Trend Curve's Michelle Lamb, this session was … [Read more...]
High Point Had a Lot of Dogs
Llamas may be on-trend, but dogs are not giving up their share of the whimsical-animal pie without a fight. At the High Point furniture market, dogs appeared in framed art and on trays, as the inspiration for the shapes and surface designs on rugs and embossed onto hardware for kids' furniture. Dogs … [Read more...]
Student Designers at FURNEX
FURNEX & The Home is the largest trade fair in Africa. Held annually in Cairo, Egypt, it hosts the top Egyptian furniture manufacturers, exporters and traders serving domestic, regional and international markets. This year, it was also host to a student exhibition called Soft and Hard. The … [Read more...]
Dots are On-Trend for Christmas
I just finished writing Trend Album™: Christmasworld 2018, The Trend Curve's trend report about the Christmasworld trade fair that runs about 80 pages and includes more than 150 images. Among the noteworthy surface-design trends for Christmas was dots. Dots are trending for Christmas because they … [Read more...]
MADE/Slow at Showcase Ireland
Showcase was founded by the Design and Crafts Council of Ireland 42 years ago. Today, it is among The Trend Curve's favorite trade fairs. Why? Because most of the products found at this annual Dublin-based event are designed and made by Irish crafters, so the quality is high. Even better, these are … [Read more...]
Lessons Learned from Halloween 2017
Those who create retail assortments rarely get a full view of what happens to products they develop and select at the fateful point of purchase. Which items really made cash registers ring? Which in-store displays actually swayed customers to buy? Not knowing the answers to these questions can feel … [Read more...]
The Allure of Outer Space in Décor
It seems that designs suggesting outer space can always be found in décor. But lately, they are being seen more often, and in a larger variety of interpretations. And although lighting seems to have a particular affinity for the topic, space-themed designs are also cropping up in a greater range of … [Read more...]
Halloween 2017 in a Few Words
I recently finished writing a retail reconnaissance report, along with my licensing-genius colleague, Leigh Ann Scharzkopf of Lookout Marketing. While we have created an entire series of these store-check reports, called Taking Stock of Retail™, the subject of this version was Halloween … [Read more...]