Gourmet Home Brings Education to You The gourmet trade is a driving force in today's housewares industry. Welcome to IHA's Gourmet Home, this site is a service to the gourmet trade. Sponsored by IHA’s Gourmet Trade Development Council we hope to provide independent retailers, manufacturers' representatives and suppliers with the tools and information that will support the growth of the gourmet trade through IHA’s regular Specialty Retailer University webinars, FREE year-round consulting services and the monthly Gourmet Home newsletter. Here you will have access to share tips from industry veterans, spotlight retailers, offer the opportunity for communication among community members and highlight opportunities at the International Home + Housewares Show. Please let us know what we can do to help make your business more successful. Perry Reynolds on behalf of IHA's Gourmet Trade Development Council
This month’s stories focus on how gourmet specialty and independent retailer’s on the East Coast responded to Hurricane Irene last August. We’re taking a micro look at Vermont to show how small retailers in rural states handle disaster.
Hit by Hurricane Irene just before Labor Day, Vermont retailers struggled to rebuild as their most important selling season, the so-called “leaf-peeping,” loomed.
“I had to find a dirt road to get out of here and do my job,” was Linda Sovner’s first thought as she scrambled around the wreckage of her West Halifax, Vt., town after Hurricane Irene.
“We’ll weather it,” is what Kathy Rose says of Hurricane Irene’s impact on Vermont. Rose is co-owner of The Store in the ski town of Waitsfield, Vt., which sits in the shadows of Sugarbush, one of the Northeast’s top skiing destinations.
The cookware industry was the focus of the latest IHA Gourmet Home Specialty Retailer University webinar held in late October. Led by the Cookware Manufacturer Association’s Hugh Rushing, more than 65 independent retailers and suppliers heard about consumer preferences, consumer demand factors, advances in materials and coatings and retail strategies for increasing cookware and bakeware sales.
