Continental drifter
Brett Hatton turned a post-college adventure into a $40 million a year business when what began as a journey through India on a vintage Enfield Bullet motorbike turned into an 18-month odyssey by foot, bike, train, camel cart, bus and elephant. "My parents gave me the spirit of adventure," Hatton said.
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Vegas, Dallas ready expansions
Las Vegas World Market Center's Building B is ready to debut this month as the largest and tallest building in downtown Las Vegas. The $345 million, 1.6 million-sq.-ft. structure is fully leased to about 300 exhibitors, including new permanent tenants as well as relocations from Building A. The 16-story Building B is connected by sky bridges on the first 10 floors to Building A.
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A class act in Omaha
Marilyn Hansen's career as an interior designer and retailer began 36 years ago when she decided to apply her artistic talents in a different area. "I grew up in Spencer, Iowa, singing, acting, even training in opera, but when it came time for college, I asked myself, how can I take this love of music, art and theatre and turn it into a job?" Hansen chose to study interior design at Iowa State ...
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Flooring and furnishings from a family fixture
Market Street runs from East York to West York, linking the city's Revolutionary past with its present day industrial, agricultural and retailing achievements. Most of the factories and shopping districts lie outside the central downtown area, home to the historic district, narrow one-way streets and limited parking.
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York's link in the Wolf chain
Michael Warren manages the York location of Wolf Furniture, a family-owned retailer that has furnished homes in Central Pennsylvania and Maryland for more than 100 years. The York store opened in 2002 and is the largest home furnishings showroom in York County. Warren estimates accessories account for about 1.
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Reinventing the mill
About 12 miles southeast of downtown Hanover, Deb and Ray Gass just celebrated their very first year as retailers with a holiday open house. Their store, The Stone Mill, is located a few miles north of York County's southern boundary, which is also where Pennsylvania meets Maryland at the Mason-Dixon Line.
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Botanicals continue to boom
The market for permanent botanicals and florals is thriving, evidenced by year-end reports of record sales, showroom expansions and new production facilities from vendors across the board. Fueled by the product category's growing acceptance as a versatile decorative accessory, the successful sales formula these days is all about designing and delivering one word .
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Enlightened elegance
"Jewelry for the home" is how Lisa Nardone of rosienyc describes her illuminating work — eye-popping color combinations of Italian crystals, beads and baubles dangling from classic chandelier, sconce and lamp designs. Based on traditional and vintage pieces, rosienyc's lighting products have captured the attention and imagination of a clientele as eclectic as her work.
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Peel & Co. offering licensed Versailles line
Peel & Company has signed a licensing agreement with The Versailles Foundation to introduce products under the Court of Versailles trademark, a brand the foundation created 25 years ago to benefit the Palace of Versailles. Based in Metairie, La., the rug company will develop a line of Aubusson rugs, tapestries and coordinating pieces of accent furniture based on the magnificently opulent in...
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Cultural Accents finds niche with ethnic looks
Huntersville, N.C.-based Cultural Accents just introduced a unique, culturally inspired collection of bath accessories for select Kohl's Department Stores. John F. Ham, Cultural Accents' president, said the collection was designed around the African tribal symbol for good luck. "We're glad that Kohl's recognizes that minority consumers desire home decor merchandise that is culturally specific,"...
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Stein Mart launches affordable luxury with Nina Campbell label
London designer Nina Campbell launched her exclusive home furnishings label for Stein Mart this month with the first two of several planned collections of coordinated bedding, accent furniture, lighting, bath accessories, tableware and rugs. Campbell was on hand at Stein Mart's Jacksonville, Fla., store Nov.
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Lighting vendors rethink 2007 after year of less than stellar sales
Rising production costs and a changing retail climate have several lighting vendors rethinking the way they're going to approach things in 2007. Successful new product lines, a quieter hurricane season and dedicated retail buyers were the plusses in a sales year most lighting manufacturers described as flat.
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Unique, classique and antique
Bay Design Store occupies a point of land formed by the intersection of Division and Detroit Streets on the north end of Ann Arbor's Historic District. Susan Bay is the very organized owner of the building, an attractive, renovated structure that was once a Mercedes-Benz dealership but now is home to her high-end furnishings showroom, office, design studio and warehouse.
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Goode seasons on Plymouth Road
In 1991, Allan and Cheryl Goode purchased and began renovating a 150-year-old building just outside Ann Arbor in the hamlet of Dixboro. It didn't take long to bring the place to life, an historical compound that included a general store, merchant's residence and a couple of barns. "We took a vacant, rundown property and renovated it, preserving as many of the original assets as possible," Chery...
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Beyond middle earth
Elaine Selo and Cynthia Shevel opened the Selo/Shevel Gallery in 1982 when downtown Ann Arbor was changing from a traditional shopping environment with mainstream department stores into the eclectic mix of cafes, specialty shops and entertainment venues that define the area today. "There were no chain stores and many of the small businesses were owned by women with no previous retail experience...
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Simple, straight and soft
"One for solitude, two for friendship and three for society," is how Thoreau described the three chairs in his home. "He was speaking about his little home on Walden Pond that he built for under $100," explained Susan Monroe, owner of Ann Arbor's Three Chairs Company. "I just like the simplicity of this idea.
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Sears' new catalog for home debuts
Sears continues the spring-launched reinvention of its home fashions department by showcasing its Simply Indoors' collection of traditional, contemporary and transitional lifestyle products in a new catalog for fall. Seventy-five pages of photos and suggestive quips give definition and personality to the retailer's branding structure for updated and new labels of bedding, bath, furniture, table...
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Texas Sage
The phrase ERIPSNI EM DNA I LLIW ERIPSNI UOY is rubber-stamped on a lime green post-it note and stuck to the back of the seminar handout for Greg O'Neal's "Smoke & Mirrors" merchandising seminar. "I am such an oddball," he said. "The first rubber stamp was accidentally made in reverse, so green-as-grass me, instead of tossing it, I used it to draw attention to this" he said, lifting the Pos...
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Nardone and Clark 'Sparkle' at New York show
"Another bright idea" is how Lisa Nardone and Meredith Clark, owners of Rosie NYC and Chandi, describe Sparkle, a new joint venture combining a few of their ideas into one illuminating collection. The new line debuted last month at the New York International Gift Show, where the spotlight was on Sparkle's lines, including Raindrops, a unique design of faceted raindrop crystals set in a cylindri...
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A showbiz success
Background Paul Thompson often finds it difficult to explain what he does for a living. "In fact," he says, "It's probably easier to say what I don't do." As vice president of visual merchandising and trends for OneCoast, a national sales rep group providing services to suppliers and retailers of home accent and gift products, Thompson wears many hats in a multi-tiered, multi-channeled role tha...
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