Housewares Business-to-business magazine for housewares retailers and their suppliers
Next year’s Housewares Conference is delighted to welcome another high-profile name to its list of speakers – Chris Gardner, who is responsible for the buying of the cookshop and dining departments for Selfridges’ stores and online.
Gardner says his desire to combine the practical and the beautiful has found perfect expression at Selfridges where, in his own words, he is striving to create “the most beautiful cookshop in the world”.
Conference delegates will find out more about what this takes, and about Selfridges itself, which has twice been awarded the accolade Best Department Store in the World. It gained the title this year at the Global Department Store Summit – which runs every two years – and also at the previous event in 2010.
Gardner will join a host of other illustrious and well-known names signed up to speak at the conference, which will take place alongside the Housewares Innovation Awards on April 16 2013, at Oxfordshire’s Heythrop Park.
Flying in from the US for the event will be Barbara Turf, until recently CEO and president of iconic US homewares and housewares chain Crate and Barrel. Also speaking will be the founders of design-led housewares supplier Joseph Joseph, Richard and Antony Joseph; trend forecaster, brand strategist and director of Trend Bible, Joanna Feely; Michael Weedon, deputy CEO and communications director of the British Independent Retailers Association; and Carol Paris, operations director of Garden & Leisure Group.
The conference will be co-chaired by leading member of the housewares industry Pam Plant, and Gary Gordon, joint managing director and buying director of the Kitchen Kapers cookshop chain.
Meanwhile, the host for the awards presentation and dinner will be celebrity interior designer, Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen, while BHETA’s Housewares Executive Director Will Jones will be awards MC.
The awards are now open for entry. Suppliers can enter products for the Cookware & Bakeware Innovation Award, Small Electricals Innovation Award, Food Preparation Innovation Award, Kitchenware Innovation Award and Tabletop Innovation Award. And retailers can enter for Retail Innovation Award (under £10m turnover), Retail Innovation Award (£1m – £10m turnover), Retail Innovation Award (over £10m turnover) and Rising Star Award.
Suppliers also have a chance to nominate a retailer for an award, and retailers can nominate the person they think is the industry’s best salesperson.
The Housewares Conference & Innovation Awards are organised by Housewares Magazine and HousewaresLive.net and have once again attracted support from leading brands, events and organisations right across the housewares industry, in the UK and beyond. The 2013 sponsors are: Arthur Price; AIS; Spring Fair International; Exclusively Housewares; Lakeland; EPE; Horwood; Home; Wilton; Kuhn Rikon; Creative Tops; Melamaster; BHETA; International Home + Housewares Show; Haus; Denby; ICTC; Tescoma; JWP; Parlane International; Taylor’s Eye Witness; The Sales Company; Villeroy & Boch; Melamaster; and Maxwell & Williams.
To book your place now at this unmissable event please click here.
