International Home & Housewares Show

This year, we finally made our way to the International Home & Housewares Show in Chicago, and it did not disappoint. This show gave us the opportunity to see first-hand some of the most innovative consumer lifestyle and product trends for all areas of the home.

Representative of the spirit of this year’s show was one of Trig’s clients, an award finalist at this year’s event. Andrew Riad and the team from Create Smart landed their SockSyncTM product among the five finalists in the Home Organization and Storage category. The SockSyncTM is a clever laundry room helper that makes sock matching and folding fast, easy, and fun. The product includes a unique spinner top and cup system that provides an efficient system to match socks, automatically fold them, and drop them into a custom fit laundry basket with a simple push of a finger. Create Smart enlisted the Trig team to execute the design for manufacturing, packaging, and user manual for SockSyncTM.

We were thrilled to see Create Smart recognized at the IHS for their hard work and clever design, and we look forward to working with them on brainstorming new ideas for next generation products.

The Trig team observed some real envelope-pushing inventions at the IHS, which is what these shows are all about. One of our favorites was the PancakeBot—a mashup of rapid prototyping technology and cooking. This 3D pancake printer takes your own designs and places pancake batter on a griddle with precision not achievable by the human hand. You can recreate practically anything in the form of a pancake—butterflies, dinosaurs, and yes, even Star Wars characters. After seeing this one, we’re thinking a Trig pancake breakfast might be in order!

Another great find at the IHS was a major launch of kitchen appliances by Oxo. This manufacturer is best known for its well-made line of hyper-ergonomic kitchen gadgets, but at IHS they unveiled an impressive suite of small appliances for the kitchen, called Oxo On. From a quiet toaster experience with a “take-a-peek” feature to a hand mixer with an LED light, this manufacturer is shaking up the small kitchen appliances category with a reimagined user experience. The new line of products is expected to launch in the fourth quarter of this year, and we can’t wait to see their success in the marketplace.

The International Home & Housewares Show’s tagline, “It’s smart,” certainly rang true for the Trig team. A true combination of art and ingenious innovation, it’s a show we’ll be sure to revisit in years to come.