Smeg’s Fab Retro Model refrigerator has to date been offered in solid colors only; but now we have the option of stripe….then we can mix & match from any color of the rainbow in the kitchen. So I came across some other favorites that will brighten up my life every day of the week while I am having my coffee….

The “So Happy” chair by Max Design (those Italians!) marries function with emotions…besides a design element, those gaps in the back of the chair are like smiling faces. And as long as I am going this far, I’m going to add a little number for baby, the Brio Grow high chair (comes with a safety strap, suitable for 6 mos. to 7 years with a removable soft padded cushion). From Brio.

So, now all I need is a table and rug….I think I’ll just go for the round white lacquered pedestal table (also available in walnut w/nickel plated iron base) from cb2.com and some Flor rug tiles….what a cool retro look I can get with all of this. Oh, and in case you don’t like my color scheme, all of the above come in at least (white and black but also red and green (just in case you decide to go for the So Happy chair in a floral design and want a black frig!).

Think this rug would be too much? I am envisioning yellow cabinets by the way and hardwood flooring in a bleached or birch wood look. If not, Flor carpet tiles has a lot more to choose from.

And somewhere in this virtual kitchen I would have storage….some for my magazines and some for all of those odds and ends things that find their way into a kitchen…from Kartell and found at DesignShopUK.com

And then, just so my walls didn’t feel neglected, I am sure I could nail a good retro clock out there somewhere but also this handsome “Flotsam and Jetsam” sculpture by artist Tony Cragg (see Inhabitat for more from this prolific reclaimed refuse artist). Let’s see, is there anything I’ve forgotten?

Check out the Retro to Go blog and their sister site, SwitchedOnSet, for more retro inspirations if you are in that kind of mood.

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I have a prediction for me for 2008 and that is that this is going to be a year of firsts; everything I am coming across of late just tops it all. This latest one is from Discovery News and I think I’ll be throwing many things out once this gets to market cause it solves just about all of my desktop organizational problems; Smart Quickie Notes Organize Themselves (and other uses for RFID tags): an official solution to the ubiquitous Post-It-Note.

Read On….

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After grappling with how to say Happy New Year to Everyone, this is what I decided on: a sneak peek to my 2009-2010 top trends, as I see it, and as a way to help wrap up 08 depending on where you are in your buying, your product launches, your presentations, or your strategy planning.

1. Color Cornucopia: Eye Candy for the Color Maven’s Soul. Image from John Galliano for Dior Haute Couture Spring 08 Collection. Seattlepi.com.

2. Mother Earth Beats Her Chest: Science Popular.

“An armada of robot submarines and marine sensors are to be deployed across the Atlantic, from Florida to the Canary Islands, to provide early warning that the Gulf Stream might be failing, an event that would trigger cataclysmic freezing in Britain for decades.” Meric Srokosz of the Southampton Oceanographic Centre, explaining the purpose of the $31 million Rapid Watch system he is heading up, does just that, citing the plotline of “The Day After Tomorrow” - specifically the collapse of the Gulf Stream - as a potential occurrence that warrants further investigation. From Treehugger.com and The Observer.

3. Finishing Touches Birth Special Effects. Photo Yohji Yamamoto, Mens FW 08, Style.com.

4. High Tech High Touch in Living Breathing Action. Image from Nau.com’s trademark “webfronts,” which is their idea of recognizing how the internet has changed consumer’s buying behavior.

5. Cross Marketing/Collaborations in Unlikely Places/Partners Creating Phenomenal Hybrids. From Designspotter and Globus by Michiel Van der Kley.

These are but a few of the macro trends I allude to during my strategy sessions or across the year in trend newsletters, reports and product development/programming strategy sessions.

Let me know if you have questions about how the above references might effect your planning for 08-2010, any initiatives that Trendbites publisher, the kimbro agency, may help you support in ‘08 and/or if you’d like to subscribe to any number of Trendbites’ sister, Trendcites (rhymes with bites!), publications.

We do trend newsletters, customized trend reports, product development strategizing and implementation, marketing consulting,
color palettes and by request only, show reports.

You can reach me by email at kim@trendcites.com.

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By accident I found these videos and they were too cool to pass up, enjoy!

Nau, Inc. CEO, Chris Van Dyke, talks indepth about Nau’s revolutionary integration of ecommerce and traditional bricks and mortar trademarked by Nau as “webfronts.”

This 2nd one is actually the Nau story, part 1, the above video was part 2. This one tells more of the upfront and basic concepts behind Nau also by its CEO, Chris Van Dyke, who is a part of that original dreamteam I discussed in yesterday’s blog…Van Dyke was Nike’s lawyer…..aside from having the gift of articulation, he’s not like any lawyer I know. If you’ve been interested up to this point, this is further grist for the mill…and it introduces us to the concept of “blur.”

This is a more personal interview with Chris Van Dyke and a little about his own background, also quite interesting, also more indepth about the manufacturing part of their process and utilizing sustainable products and creating a values based business with a credible business story to share.

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Coined and trademarked “Webfront,” this is nau’s physical but revolutionary concept of integrating ecommerce with traditional bricks and mortar.

Their business model is destined for a college textbook. Their management style and structure is what great books are written on. The vision it took to figure all of this out is what sought after lecturers are paid the big big bucks for. And it’s what all of us have been looking for even if we don’t know it yet. With only 4 physical locations as of this moment (there are 10 more scheduled for this year), it will take some of us a while longer to be able to take in the whole experience nau has to offer. Until then, we have only to visit their online shop, www.nau.com, to peruse, learn, shop and even share by contributing to their blog, the thought kitchen, to know we’ve come across the real deal…and an answer to the 21st century’s debate on, well, just about everything having to do with creating, buying and selling goods.

It’s a brilliant concept that has been extremely well executed and hits every button that the globe has been thinking about and grappling with to figure out the solution to for at least the last decade and yet to succeed at making happen, until nau that is.

What am I talking about? What am I falling all over myself to get out here? It’s only the solution to how to blend the traditional bricks and mortar retail business model with that of the internet online shop. And nau (pronounced now, if you haven’t figured it out yet) has even trademarked a name for it….no longer referred to as storefronts and consistent with throwing out the traditional bricks and mortar business model , a byproduct of inventing the successful combination of ecommerce and bricks and mortar, their physical locations are dubbed and referred to as “webfronts.” Get used to it, cause it’s how we will all come to understand shopping for at least the next 40-50 years….I’d stake everything I know, am, and understand industry to be on that prediction. Not because that’s what nau set out to do– tell the world how to do it…that is not their style. No, they just figured out how to do it and then did it, simple as that.

nau’s founder, Eric Reynolds, based the concept on 3 primary principles…First,that their business model be based on distribution of a niche outdoor apparel line to be sold directly to only their website and their own stores while all product was to be made of sustainable materials and therefore showing a heightened and active concern and respect for the environment, and secondly by recognizing that the internet and the customer have changed consumer buying behavior, they work to integrate the concepts of bricks and mortar with online retailing. A third and final principle, the company give back to the community at large and consistently. By employing all of these principles the result is a more efficient, lower overhead, reduced footprint organization that engages its customers from the moment they first hear about nau to well beyond the purchase of the product, be it online at home or at one of their webfronts or a combination of the two.

That type of creative thinking is what the world, or at least the retailing industry, has at long last been looking for but has yet to produce, like I said, until nau. It doesn’t stop there though, with just a revolutionary concept. The real brilliance of this type of conceptual thinking is knowing that yes, it also has to be executed, and Reynolds, realizing he wasn’t the one to execute, set out to find the perfect leadership to do so and found it in a strategicallly thought out choice to hire leadership of very seasoned professionals…who he found (all from the ranks of Nike and Patagonia); call it the Original Seven, Reynold’s Dreamteam, whatever….they have thought organized this company, this revolution into something that works, has a heartbeat, attracts and keeps loyal customers because the “shopping experience” is such that they’ve never had before but in their dreams, until nau. From inception to infinity and beyond…success is embedded in the very nature of the beast.

Center column is nau’s trademark “information tree,” which allows customers to bring scanned cards of their item of interest from the store to research further at nau’s website. The image below shows nau’s trademark “shop to units” which allow customers to purchase whatever nau product they want and have it shipped directly to their home address or any other recipients address. A customer’s incentive for doing so is a 10% discount and free shipping plus the knowledge that by doing so they have just interactively helped to create a retail business’ smaller footprint by keeping its inventory and overhead lower and with that cost savings to “host” company, nau, they pick whatever charity they want their (unprecented) 5% of sales to go to from nau’s list of environmental, social, humanitarian, local, or international non-profits (the back wall of the webfront (shown above) is termed “the Giving Wall”) .

nau’s “shop-to-units” are part of their “webfront” strategy.

Ian Yolles, nau’s VP of Communications and part of the original Dreamteam, says every employee at nau demonstrates that same level of committment and passion towards the core principles its founder Reynolds set out to create, from the original thought leadership down to the level of excitement the webfront sales associates exude when a customer enters their door. Mikie Herman, nau’s VP of Webfronts and arriving at nau from that other historic retail phenom, Starbucks, says the only issue is that the associates don’t overwhelm the customer with their excitement about the process nau has invented. Much like what I have probably done here….

Oh, and we get to wear some pretty awesome clothing while we are at it.

The Chrysalis Dress. Take a sneak peek at Nau’s Spring ‘08 collection. “>.

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