THE GOODS : Home Economics : Machines that make gourmet meals. Coffee mugs that plug into your dashboard. Housewares in 1995 will focus on saving time and money.
How will American lifestyles change in the new year? What will consumers be consuming? Here are some predictions for 1995:
* A continued “cocooning” trend as aging yuppies intensify interests in gourmet cooking and bread-baking.
* An accelerated rate of home remodeling as families grow, but budgets don’t.
* An unprecedented passion for getting organized.
* Computerized cooking that does everything but serve the meal.
These forecasts are not the musings of social demographers or crystal ball gazers, but samplings from the 2,000-exhibit catalogue of the upcoming International Housewares Show, Jan. 15-18 in Chicago’s McCormick Place.
“The show is a good picture of what’s going on throughout the country,” says Tom Conley, executive director of the sponsoring National Housewares Manufacturers’ Assn.
The gigantic trade event, which has a waiting list for exhibit space, will unveil thousands of products in 92 categories, from acrylic ware to vaporizers. More than 2,000 manufacturers around the world have done their market research and think they know what consumers are going to be shopping for in 1995, Conley says.
“It’s a global marketplace of buyers, sellers, products and ideas,” he says. “It’s the largest housewares-only exposition in the world. We’ll have our 100th show in 1997.”
Although the term housewares may suggest a homey image of pots and pans and spatulas, those concepts were replaced years ago, Conley says. The show, which attracts 50,000 visitors, grew to encompass products for every room in the house and for outdoors.
“Our overall theme this year is diversity,” Conley says. “That’s not just race and nationality, but we are also designing specific products for different age groups, for different kinds of households and for changing lifestyles.
“We’ve become increasingly health conscious, so buyers will see more and more products for rotisserie cooking. And because our tastes are increasingly global, there are new ways to cook Chinese food or heat tortillas, for instance.”
New ways of eating also dictate new ways of serving food, says John Meier, head of the glassware giant Libbey Inc. “We’ve been in business since 1818, and until recently, we had only a few coffee mugs, and we hadn’t heard of a microbrewery. Now they are everywhere, and so are little coffee bars, and our research shows they will keep growing.”
Libbey has responded by designing a spectrum of mugs and steins for sipping the new variety of ice beers, nonalcoholic beers, ales and stouts, he says, along with “all shapes and sizes of coffee vessels.”
A boom in home businesses and telecommuting has inspired a wide variety of ready-to-assemble desks and storage units, and expandable modular systems. And the economic factor that keeps many growing families in their first homes has created a need for organizers of every sort, says Randy Coates, a spokesman for Closetmaid.
“People are trying to do more with the space they have,” he says. “We introduced the whole concept of closet organization 27 years ago, but in the last two years, we’ve introduced more than 275 new products.”
Practical solutions for storage of small items are hot right now, he says, “like small, light shelves that sit on the kitchen counter or in the refrigerator, or a little wire gadget that holds 12 soda cans and dispenses them.”
Another major motif at the housewares show will be technology aimed at further efficiency in everyday tasks--from an electronic roach killer to a new hair dryer with a volume-building attachment designed to give hair fullness.
The overriding consumer trend of the 1990s continues to be economy of time and money, says consultant Thomas I. Rubel of Management Horizons, consulting division of Price Waterhouse. That will be the message of his “Retailing 2000” keynote address at the show.
The American consumer’s value equation has changed for the ‘90s, Rubel says. “They are saying ‘We want more for less--more fashion, innovation, service and convenience for less time and money and risk.’ They don’t have as much discretionary time as in the past, and the time budget is as important as the money budget in many shopping behaviors.”
That accounts for such products as irons with quick heat for people who iron clothes as they are getting dressed in the morning, and a coffee mug that plugs into a dashboard cigarette lighter for breakfast-on-the-run.
“It keeps the coffee warm all the way to the office and you can unplug and take it in with you,” says Dov Glucksman, president of Appliance Development. “People have totally upgraded the quality of coffee they drink in recent years. The rise of coffee bars is generational, and has to do with health consciousness.”
For a generation that has also discovered homemade bread, American Harvest has turned out the first bread maker that bakes two loaves at a time.
“Bread makers have really caught on in the last few years,” says company spokeswoman Mary Jo Exley. “Our research showed people would make one loaf and it was gone immediately, so we came up with a double-baking pan. You just throw in the yeast, the flour and the water and press a button. The machine does the rest. It’s a really neat idea.”
But the ultimate in time saving for 1995 may be the new Robochef, which Don Wong, president of C.P. Design, will demonstrate at the Chicago housewares show.
Robochef is a robotic cook, says Wong, an engineer who designed the device. Its microprocessor is programmed with hundreds of recipes for gourmet dishes and it will do all the chopping, mixing and baking, if you just put in the proper ingredients.
“People like to eat good food, but they don’t have time to cook,” Wong says. “This is the only machine that allows you to prepare international cuisine by pressing a button.”
