Tales from the Housewares Show, Part One

As we wrote last month, we were recently given the opportunity to attend the International Housewares Show in Chicago—an incredible opportunity! The event in a lot of respects marks our official launch of the Hourglass® coffee maker, so we’ve been excited and frantic, to say the least!

I’m happy to report that the tradeshow was a massive success, and after 3 long and wonderful days, we’ve returned to Portland exhausted, happy, and amazed.

The show was a blast! Each morning, we got up at 5:30 a.m. to catch the shuttle from our hotel to the absolutely gargantuan McCormick Place. Once there, we found our way through endless tunnels, hallways, and stairs to the show floor, where we set up our booth and got to know the other vendors with exciting new products for the home. McCormick Place is Chicago’s premiere convention center, and walking through the massive halls, I couldn’t help but get a sense of how far the Hourglass has come.


We knew the Hourglass would be a hit, but we had no idea how popular our coffee samples would be. Over three days, we gave away more than 500 samples. That’s four gallons of extract! At first, it started with just buyers coming by, initially skeptical of a healthier coffee, waiting for the catch, and then finding themselves happily surprised after their first sip. Then the vendors from nearby booths caught on, at first making small talk over Hourglass samples…and before we knew it, people from all of our surrounding booths were coming to us for their morning coffee! In fact, by the last day, the staff from a very well known coffee company (I won’t embarrass them here!) were sneaking over to our booth, asking for samples.
So much happened over the course of the trip, and I’m excited to share more of it here with you soon—but for now, check out the pictures, and look for the Hourglass in your favorite stores and catalogs soon!