International Home and Housewares Show 2007

My brother rented a booth and exhibited his industrial design services at the 2007 International Home and Housewares Show. The show ran from Mar 11 - Mar 13 at McCormick Place in Chicago. He invited myself and a mutual friend to come and help him at his booth. We got a chance to meet a lot of fellow inventors as well as several companies that are doing good things for inventors such as Evergreen IP and Idea Tango.

Many housewares aren't really new inventions, but rather they are new designs for old inventions. These new designs still contain the creativity and awareness to make things better and challenge the limits of imagination.

Of course, there are also new inventions in the housewares field every year. One of the people that my brother met at his booth was the original inventor of the Powersquid. My brother is a huge fan of this product, so he was thrilled to meet its inventor. The Powersquid is a powerstrip that has numerous "tentacles" that allow you to plug in many bulky power transformers and other cords into one power strip.

There were also a number of inventors in the Inventors Corner area of the show. Many of the inventors exhibiting had patents or at least were patent pending so they were excited to show you exactly how their invention worked and why it was made. I got to talk to some and encouraged them to get more involved in their local inventors groups and look into branding and the like to add more value to their invention offering. Many inventors find themselves pigeonholed, and keep trying the same strategy to get their invention to market. The fact that they got a booth says a lot about their commitment to getting their idea out there and on the shelves.

Some inventors were just looking to utilize the traffic to gain input on their invention and see what people liked or disliked so when they improved upon it they could incorporate those insights to create a better product.

The Electronic Retailing representatives came around and gave a few inventors a chance to pitch their ideas to a panel who decided if they thought their product would be appropriate for direct sales. Direct sales include infomercials, home shopping, catalog sales, etc. If you didn't appeal to the panel it was usually your price point or the fact that your invention didn't fill the need of a wide enough market segment to justify airtime on QVC and the like. Also, when you are inventing for sale on television, you must have something that is "demonstrable". Products that need to be seen to be understood sell well on TV.

My brother's company had a ton of interest from both inventors and big name companies alike so the trip was well worth the effort. We all came out of it with a positive take on the International Home and Housewares Show.