National Hardware Show Heats Up With New Homewares

The National Hardware Show kicked off Tuesday, May 8, with several home environment suppliers exhibiting inside the Las Vegas Convention giving their latest portable fans a workout as triple-digit temperatures blazed outside the convention center.

The unseasonably hot start to May in Las Vegas, along with a general return to more seasonable temperatures across the Midwest and Northeast, provided welcome relief for fan vendors at the show, many of which reported a sluggish run-up to this year’s retail fan season because of persistent winter conditions that stretched well into the spring in many major markets.

The overall show opened to a visibly busy start, including steady traffic flow through the Homewares division in LVCC’s Central Hall and the Outdoor Living division in the North Hall.

The Homewares Show segment served up several notable introductions:

• World and Main’s home environment group unveiled the Swiffer Continuous Clean air cleaning system, licensed under the popular Proctor & Gamble cleaning tool brand and featuring a patented, replaceable, triple-layer filtering medium fashioned from the Swiffer cleaning cloth.

Design Ideas unveiled an open-stock program that extends its recently introduced MeshWorks mesh shelving systems.

• Design Ideas presented a new open-stock extension of its recently introduced MeshWorks mesh shelving kits for a variety of rooms in the home. The open-stock program, created following retailer feedback to the new mesh shelving system during the recent International Home + Housewares Show, features 20 accessories in a number of colors for a wide choice of custom configurations.

• Companion Group presented an expansive program of grill tools licensed under the McCormick’s Grill Mates seasoning brand, as well as specialty grill tools licensed under such other McCormick flavoring brands as French’s, Frank’s RedHot, Old Bay and Stubbs.