HomePage News presents InSight+, an exclusive curator’s perspective on the creation and presentation of the HomePage News InSight Trend Index 2023/24.

The InSight Trend Index is a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive digital report examining emerging and enduring home and housewares trends through products and innovations that embody them. The InSight team explored influential industry trade shows in the U.S. and abroad to identify global trends driving growth and expansion across home and housewares categories.

The trend index features nine portfolios ranging from at-home entertaining and outdoor living to trends in material and color, culminating with a look at the encompassing wellness trend. The portfolios represent how consumers are living, the evolution of their lives and homes, and what we found to be the roots of ongoing consumer lifestyles that drive trends. 

This special video presentation features InSight report curator author and industry trend analyst Tom Mirabile, founder of Springboard Futures, and report designer Dawn Evans, director of marketing for the International Housewares Association. Mirabile and Evans will take you behind the curtain to show how each of the nine InSight trend portfolios came into view. They explain why now a pivotal time for such a vivid exploration of trends in lifestyle, design, function and materials that drive today’s innovations; and how the HomePage News InSight Trend Index can be used as a practical tool for manufacturers and retailers cultivating the next growth opportunities for home and housewares.

The pandemic, like few periods in the history of the home and housewares business, illuminated the importance of trend — and what matters most to consumers. Post-pandemic, amid new market challenges, the business can’t be simply transactional. Success requires distinguishing from competitors and communicating in the clearest terms about your products, your brands and your relevance. In tighter market conditions, what now might be about taking market share will soon need to be about driving growth across an industry. How supplier and retailer brands tell their stories will depend on how they read their markets. The perspective will be different from business. But these are the new rules of engagement.

The HomePage News Trend Index applies years of expertise and analysis to understand where the consumer hot spots are… and where they’re headed.

It connects and synchronizes teams that run a business. It illustrates how they can think, create and execute as a team. Product development, marketing and merchandising can’t occur in a tunnel leading to so-called magic price points. Consider the InSight Trend Index a model for how intuitive, informed and industrious lifestyle product creation and selection can build a sustainable lifestyle business. And how that requires a collaborative team effort. 

The HomePage New InSight Trend Index is a collaborative team effort by Mirabile of Springboard Futures, Evans of IHA and the entire HomePage News team. It is also a collaboration with and for the home and housewares industry. In a way, our roles in bringing this unprecedented trend report to the market stand as a metaphor for how retailers should shop trade shows… to look for more than products… to look for consumer-driven experiences and solutions.

With help from today’s deeper perspective on why trends matter more than ever and how that fueled the InSight Trend Index, we encourage you to take another look at each of the report’s trend portfolios. See how it all adds up to provide what we hope is a truly inspiring view on how to curate home and housewares success.

The HomePage News Insight Trend Index will evolve in 2024 to support the next wave of trend-activating home and housewares products. Future installments of the report showcasing evolving and new trend portfolios will showcase added marketplace intelligence and data to provide greater depth to the trends discovered and explored by InSight and the forces that drive and sustain them.

InSight, is, indeed, a powerful tool. 

— Peter Giannetti, Editor-in-Chief

View All InSight Portfolios

HomePage News presents RapidFire with Circana, an exclusive video series spotlighting data-driven insights on key home + housewares trends and topics from Joe Derochowski, vice president and home industry advisor for Circana.

In this episode of Rapid Fire, Derochowski will share his forecast on the 2023 holiday season for housewares, as well as some insights to get the industry thinking early about next year’s holiday.

HomePage News presents RapidFire with Circana, an exclusive video series spotlighting data-driven insights on key home + housewares trends and topics from Joe Derochowski, vice president and home industry advisor for Circana.

In this episode of RapidFire, Derochowski will share his data-backed insights on how the housewares business can leverage product replacement cycles to renew sales growth in 2023 and beyond.

HomePage News presents Design Driven, a new video series hosted by Tom Mirabile, founder of Springboard Futures and consumer trend analyst for the International Housewares Association and HomePage News.

Design Driven explores what’s now, new and next in materials, form and function while examining the consumers and lifestyles driving today’s home and housewares design trends and sales growth potential. During the series, Mirabile will interview designers, design experts and market forecasters to reveal actionable information, insights and inspiration to guide evolving design for the home and housewares marketplace.

This episode features Evan Dash, CEO of Storebound, which includes brands like Dash, Sobro, Maytag and Zakarian. He discusses design, innovation and the growth of his company through consumer-centric development.

HomePage News presents Design Driven, a new video series hosted by Tom Mirabile, founder of Springboard Futures and consumer trend analyst for the International Housewares Association and HomePage News.

Design Driven explores what’s now, new and next in materials, form and function while examining the consumers and lifestyles driving today’s home and housewares design trends and sales growth potential. During the series, Mirabile will interview designers, design experts and market forecasters to reveal actionable information, insights and inspiration to guide evolving design for the home and housewares marketplace. 

This Design Driven features Leatrice (Lee) Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute and director at The Eiseman Center for Color Information & Training, discussing how you can “speak in color,” messaging and motivating with the power of the palette.

To see the latest color trends brought to market in a wide array of home and housewares products, view the Pantone ColorWatch portfolio from the HomePage News InSight™ Trend Index 2023/24.

The International Housewares Association (IHA) and the Cookware & Bakeware Alliance (CBA) recently co-sponsored the third installment of an online roundtable series to bring the latest news on PFAS chemical legislation across the U.S. and the E.U. and its impact on the housewares business.

The roundtable —  “PFAS Legislation Update: A Global Perspective on What the Housewares Industry Needs To Know” —  featured a panel of experts on the PFAS topic who shared key information, insights and updates to help home and housewares manufacturers, marketers and retailers prepare for pending and enacted PFAS legislation among several states. Since the first joint PFAS roundtable by IHA and CBA, several laws have been enacted, conversations in Europe are in progress and plantiffs’ lawyers have started targeting marketing claims in certain industries.

The panel included Fran Groesbeck, managing director, Cookware & Bakeware Alliance; Tobias Gerfin, CEO of Swiss kitchenware company Kuhn Rikon AG and president of the European Association for Cookware, Cutlery and Flatware (FEC); and Thomas Lee, a partner in the Energy, Environment and Infrastructure Practice Group of Bryan, Cave Leighton and Paisner and leader of the law firm’s PFAS Team. Peter Giannetti, editor-in-chief of HomePage News, moderated the roundtable discussion.

For more information:

• IHA/CBA PFAS Legislation Update Slides

Housewares TrendHive is an exclusive video series created for HomePage News by Tom Mirabile, founder of Springboard Futures and consumer trend forecaster for the International Housewares Association and HomePage News.​

Each installment of Housewares TrendHive will feature themed, short-form video galleries curated by Springboard Futures from major international home and housewares shows and design resources to feature products and innovations that exemplify key consumer lifestyle and design trends.

The week’s TrendHive spotlights Face Forward: obvious or obscured, fanciful or flirty, faces are taking the stage as an evolving and expanding focal point across home and décor categories.

Tom Mirabile, principal of Springboard Futures, delivered a keynote session, Consumers In Control: Insights & Imperatives for the New Economy during The Inspired Home Show 2023.

He revealed key findings from the 2023 Value Equation Index — new research highlighting the most important elements influencing consumers’ purchases of home and housewares products today. The survey of 1,200 U.S. householders was conducted in late February 2023 as a joint project of Springboard Futures, Project Partners Network and The Trend Curve.

Truth on Trend is an exclusive HomePage News video series that examines the evolving connection between consumer behavior and the home + housewares industry and the pursuit of effective trend forecasting.

The series is co-hosted by Peter Giannetti, HomePage News editor-in-chief, and Tom Mirabile, founder of Springboard Futures and trend analyst for HomePage News and the International Housewares Association.

Nancy Fire of Nancy Fire Design, a pioneer of sustainable development and design in the home and housewares industries, joins the Truth On Trend team for part two a lively discussion on the current industry landscape on environmentally responsible behavior, and the importance of “walking the talk” when serving a consumer who is more informed (and demanding) than ever before.

Watch Truth on Trend | Nancy Fire: The Language of Sustainability, Part 1

Truth on Trend is an exclusive HomePage News video series that examines the evolving connection between consumer behavior and the home + housewares industry and the pursuit of effective trend forecasting.

The series is co-hosted by Peter Giannetti, HomePage News editor-in-chief, and Tom Mirabile, founder of Springboard Futures and trend analyst for HomePage News and the International Housewares Association.

Nancy Fire of Nancy Fire Design, a pioneer of sustainable development and design in the home and housewares industries, joins the Truth On Trend team for part one of a lively discussion on the current industry landscape on environmentally responsible behavior, and the importance of “walking the talk” when serving a consumer who is more informed (and demanding) than ever before.

Watch Truth on Trend | The New Language of Sustainability, Part 2