International homewares show reveals latest trends
CHICAGO -- Want a blender with an app that eliminates the need to measure ingredients? Or a machine that pulls drinking water from the air? How about a way to make that flat-white espresso drink in your own kitchen?
If it's something you want for your home -- or didn't know you needed -- chances are, it will appear here first at the International Home + Housewares Show, reports CBS News correspondent Anna Werner.
"All of the needs that we serve are the kinds of things we all do every day. We cook, we clean, we organize our homes. It's going to continue," said Perry Reynolds, who's with the International Housewares Association that puts on the show. "The question is what are the kinds of products that win or lose? And I think you're going to see some of those today."
It's the largest of its kind in the world - 2,200 vendors from 47 countries crowd the floor, exhibiting the trends of today and tomorrow.
It's here that the companies that make home goods meet and make deals with the retailers selling them.
Innovative technology, bold design and functionality are all on display this year -- themes consumers, especially millennials, have been asking for.
"The millennials are looking for things that sort of help define them. My sense is that they want well-designed products," Reynolds said.
Mary Moore owns three kitchen supply stores in Atlanta. She's been coming to the show, and watching trends emerge since 2003.
"In all of these three huge buildings and hundreds of thousands of products, I'll whittle it down to the 7,500 that are in my store," Moore said.
"How do you possibly get through this entire show?" Werner asked her.
"It's really hard. I think I timed it out one time," she said. "With the number of vendors you can spend something like 18.5 seconds at every vendor if you want to see every vendor."
The sales pitches here are endless.
"This is a light-up lollipop," one woman said.
"This mug will keep your coffee hotter for longer," another man pitched.
"It will not slip or flip no matter how hard it's hit," a man demonstrated.
But for independent inventors, it's a chance to hawk their creations with hopes that a major company notices.
Alison Tringale brought her idea, Tidy Snap, as a way to keep clothes neat.
"You know the routine at night -- you pick your clothes up for the next day and the kids are rifling through their drawers and throwing clean clothes on the floor, and I kind of just lost it and came downstairs," Tringale said. "My husband is an engineer and I said, 'Look. You're an engineer. Fix this.'"
So he did, and now the whole family are pros.
The family's invention is already getting interest from major retailers, as is the oh-so-creative pancake making machine Miguel Valenzuela came up with to "draw" pancakes in almost any shape imaginable, from the Eiffel Tower to "CBS This Morning" co-hosts' faces.
"We've been around the world showing it to different people," Valenzuela said. "People are talking about having it in their cafes and their restaurants and their homes, all over different places, so we're really excited about it."