How sustainability and WFH culture create opportunities for home goods

As homeware buyers from around the world descended on Hong Kong this weekend, exhibitors hoped their sharpened focus on sustainability and products aimed at consumers embracing the Covid-born work-from-home trend would fill order books.

Organized by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC), Home InStyle 2024 attracted 1,750 exhibitors, up 70 percent from last year, proving that retail buyers and brands are returning to trade shows. While the majority of exhibitors were from mainland China, others came from North and Southeast Asia, Australia, Japan, Korea, Saudi Arabia – and even Poland.

Homewares is a typically fickle market, with trends coming and going based on global events, fashion and popular cultural influences. But as the painful memories of Covid fade, two things stood out in Hong Kong: the growing influence of sustainability on product design, range development, components and marketing – and the way consumers are enjoying items that individualize their homes. Since the pandemic, when lockdowns left people with little choice about where to work, many consumers’ homes have become their main workplace.

Peter Pang, founder of Hong Kong-based Pete’s Design Studio, uses laser etching or engraving to create decorative items based on historical Hong Kong posters, street signs, old coins or architecture. Before the pandemic, he focused on small production runs of products that foreign tourists could buy as souvenirs or gifts, such as handmade mahjong sets.

“Covid has changed our trajectory enormously. We made some very useful, practical and functional things and when Covid hit, travel immediately stopped and people started spending their money elsewhere. That really changed us because we now have more freedom to be creative. Some of the things we make for Hong Kong consumers are quite useless, but they are fun.

“People are now more concerned with interior decoration, they like beautiful items and decorations more. They don’t mind, if the product doesn’t really have a function, they just want to decorate their interior space.”

Pang struck a deal with a private museum in Hong Kong to convert vintage propaganda and signage into engraved signs that can be hung on the wall, such as a sign banning hawks, and a series of coasters that can be arranged to create an etching of the famous former Clock Tower of Canton-Kowloon Railway Station in Tsim Sha Tsui.

Like other exhibitors, Pang is quick to reassure people about his company’s commitment to sustainability. It encourages customers to use softwoods, which take 10 to 20 years to grow, instead of hardwoods, which can take up to 100 years.

Many other exhibitors highlighted the trend of consumers rewarding themselves at home – while also recognizing the modest size of Asian apartments, especially in Hong Kong.

China’s Jiangmen Bangle Metal Manufacturing Co showed off high-end Banlee Coffee gadgets for coffee lovers making their brews at home – from powder presses, evaporated milk jugs, a range of tampers and coffee pots to a complex vintage-style manual coffee machine. where you turn a handle to push the water through the freshly ground coffee that drips into the cup.

Ningbo Ucome Lighting has created a range of decorative table lamps that also serve as practical accessories, such as flower vases, fruit bowls or a wine decanter.

Swinging Sticks, a kinetic sculpture created by the Gee Long Group of Hong Kong and based on German technology, creates an illusion of continuous movement. Two sticks, balanced on a vertical triangle, move constantly, thanks to metal, magnetic precision “and physical concepts derived from chaos theory,” spokeswoman Rebecca Chen told us.

The essence of sustainability references

Regardless of the product category at Home InStyle – bathroom, kitchen, decor, storage solutions, cleaning, pet supplies or flooring – the vast majority of exhibitors were keen to comment on the sustainability of their products. The veracity of claims – beyond those backed by independent certification – is always difficult to quantify, but show organizers this year went so far as to apply a green logo to eligible exhibitor spaces.

One of the largest displays at the show was created by Japan’s Taiyo Group, which has created an eco-friendly tableware brand called Rebirth. All its products – from breakfast cereals, stackable cups, mugs and plates to trays and cutlery – are made from recycled PET plastic bottles and certified for food applications in the EU and the US.

The company places plastic bottle collection boxes at schools and collects discarded bottles from households. Children who collect and donate used bottles are rewarded with library tickets and the company runs an educational program to teach students about the dangers of dumping in the ocean and the enormous amount of plastic bottles thrown away every day.

Such an innovation seems popular in Japan: another exhibitor, Fukui Craft Co, supported at Home InStyle 2024 by the Japanese government’s SME Support Japan program, showed plates and bowls made from 50 percent finely ground eggshells, using waste collected from food factories. .

“They are harder to break than ceramic, more stable and heavier than plastic,” said a company spokesman, taking pains to point out that the shells were not used for decoration – a technique very popular in Vietnam – but for the actual construction of the dish.

Governments of several Asian countries are implementing laws to ban single-use plastics, a trend reflected by many exhibitors displaying a range of storage cups, water bottles, shopping bags and sustainably recycled or recyclable cutlery, often packaged in sets for portability while traveling.

The Hong Kong company Homelover Products makes tableware from rice husks and tea leaves and ensures that it is free from pesticide residues and plastic.

The exhibitor who traveled the furthest to attend Home InStyle 2024 was undoubtedly Paw from Poland, which has developed napkins made from biodegradable tissue paper, with their unusual color highlighting their natural origins.

Flowers that last 10 years

The Thai company Flora Flowers approaches sustainability from a different direction. In a small factory in a suburb of Bangkok, this 20-year-old family business freeze-dries fresh flowers like roses and orchids, creating vacuum-sealed arrangements in display cases that will last a decade.

The company has steadily built a customer base in the US and Japan, but strict quarantine restrictions in markets such as Australia, New Zealand and the UAE are preventing the import of fresh plants and seeds, posing a challenge to the company’s expansion there.

Fink Charoenvasnadumrong, a daughter of the founders, said Within retail the concept could save shopping centres, food and beverage outlets and hotels a fortune by replacing traditional fresh flower arrangements, which only last a week. She is currently talking to a group of shopping centers in Bangkok about a solution, noting that while Flora has a catalog of small to medium encapsulated flower arrangements, it can make displays of any size to order.

Flora sources some of its flowers from contracted growers, but buys many of the ingredients for arrangements from local markets, supporting the local economy.

“We try to care about environmental issues and support local Thai markets. Every small step you can take makes the environment a little better, we say.”

Home Instyle 2024 ends on Tuesday.