Summertime and the living is easy or at least time to bring out the ice cream. M & M’s timing for the release of this new product was perfect. Plus, it’s a brilliantly simple line extension. Why not just dip ice cream into a vat of M&M’s chocolate as long as you are dipping your ice cream and as long as you already have a vat of melted chocolate handy? Since it’s a well known brand there should be ready adoption.

Tell me if you’ve tried them yet and if you like them. There is actually a double layer of chocolate skin around the ice cream and at least one reviewer felt it changed the ratio of chocolate to ice cream by doing so but not in a good way. I think I’ll try it for myself and see. I just have to get over the high calorie count–190 calories/serving.

What the heck, I’ll be splurging for July 4th anyway.

Bookmark

I’ve gone on and on about Nau over the last six months, thinking it was the best thing to come along since sliced bread. It’s my opinion their “webfronts,” Nau’s trademark term for stores where you can purchase their product at an internet kiosk instead of bring it home from the store, getting an extra 10% to do so and helping to reduce a brand’s overall carbon footprint, were or are the cutting edge of retailing.

It’s where many retailers need to take their next step, and do so responsibly. As I’ve commented before, Nau’s business model is one for the text books, so I just don’t think this is Nau’s final curtain, or maybe I’m just in denial. Maybe I have more in common with Hillary Clinton than I think. Hang in there till the bitter, bitter end.

Ian Yolles, Nau’s vp of communications, says they were not immune to this nasty economic environment and investors became jittery; that just says to me they have the wrong investors; they need some Seventh Avenue guys used to eating nails at breakfast and concrete for lunch.

You don’t go down until the fat lady sings and in Nau’s instance, we’ve only just taken our seats before we were told the theatre was going dark. How is this happening that one of the greatest ideas to hit retailing in years is shuttering its doors and windows as we speak. So Wal-Mart can have a run on recycled t-shirts? Pull-ease.

I’ll refer you to TreeHugger’s obituary for Nau, they wax much more poetic about it than I and manage to give them their proper due at the same time.

Bookmark

Sorry to end the week on such a sour note, but when I got this article from MediaPost on how consumer’s were pulling back spending on everything except driving, I thought it worth posting:

How Gas Prices Affect Shopping Habits

___________________________________________________Oct___ Apr___ +/-

Eat out less often…………………………………………………………….38%….53%……15

Carpooling or finding alternative means of transport………10%….15%…….5

Delay Purchase of new home……………………………………………5%….10%……..5

Less shopping of non-essential retail items……………………..42%….65%…..23

Purchase fewer media entertainment items…………………….33%….48%…..15

Will not change any spending habits………………………………..43%….22%….-21

Source: Kelley Blue Book Marketing
Research Gas Prices and Shopping Habits-
Trending Over Time

This pretty much reflects my changes, except I am taking public transportation even for just running errands unless it requires a trunk.

Bookmark

Of course if you are a color, light, and texture junkie like I am, you’ll love the collaboration of Dupont’s Corian (known mostly as a wonderful and seamless kitchen countertop material) and Missoni Home (Rosita Missoni and her husband were the original founders of Missoni Fashion) introducing Corian’s five new translucent colors while the material itself is used for all manner of things around the home. In that respect, it was a brilliant pairing….Missoni known for their vibrant color and their unique patterns was the perfect choice to help introduce Corian’s new colors but to also show just how well rounded and fascinating Corian as a material can be….

To highlight the pairing, the above picture illustrates the many colors of Missoni in a giant spool of yarn, the “Spool” itself made of Corian using the color Nocturne (black and polished). The flooring beneath the “Spool” is also made with DuPont™ Corian® (Cameo White and Nocturne colours) and features a pattern designed by Missoni rythmically inserting in the “background colour” a series of small squares of contrasting colour (glossy background finish and white matt squares). In an adjacent space is a “Ball” of yarn, also made of Dupont Corian. Who knew you could bend it like Beckham?

A familiar theme throughout the exhibit, Rosita Missoni, the designer played with the negative space black and white can create by alternating and juxtaposing one black/white color pattern against another.

The “CORIAN® loves MISSONI” interior design project is a loft-style apartment (extending over the two floors of the “Corian® Design - Milano Store” showroom) with a series of functional “rooms” - an entrance area, reception, hallway, dining room and kitchen on the ground floor and living room, bathroom and bedroom on the lower floor. In the dining room, above, the table is made of Corian using MissoniHome’s Bolt pattern. Echoing the aesthetics of the table, the MissoniHome “Bolt” pattern is stencilled on the wall behind, in a larger scale. The chandelier was designed by Rosita Missoni, is made of Corian’s Glacier White and spells Missoni. The chairs around the dining room table are Moroso’s “Ripple” chair.

A hallway area dedicated to showcasing the five new translucent colours of DuPont™ Corian® - Glacier Ice, Strawberry Ice, Blueberry Ice, Mint Ice and Lime Ice – take on an enhanced luminosity when back-lit. The area features five cubic stools made in each of the five translucent colours of DuPont™ Corian®. Contrasting with tops featuring a smooth surface, the sides of these stools have been carved with “Onda” (Wave) pattern by MissoniHome, which is also repeated, on a larger scale, on the back-wall in pale green DuPont™ Corian® Mint Ice. The cubic stools are lit from within by an LCD system developed by Artemide, run from rechargeable batteries, making them totally wireless and mobile. On the wall, a backlit circular curved fixture made in translucent DuPont™ Corian® Mint Ice is engraved with Missoni’s “Esmeraldas” pattern allowing lights to elegantly diffuse with varying intensity.

So, let’s get to the living room……..

Descending to the lower floor, visitors find themselves in the living room area where they are surrounded by a combination of multi-coloured and monochrome forms. The “Relaxer” chair and “Wengen” rug by MissoniHome are set against a large backlit screen: a wonder in terms of both aesthetics and technology. Made in DuPont™ Corian® Glacier White and carved with the “Esmeraldas” pattern from MissoniHome, the four parts of this screen are slim boxes illuminated using Artemide’s “My White Light” system, integrating RGBs and LCDs, to give different coloured lights and varying shades of white light, from warm to cool.
The two low tables in the living room space feature bases in DuPont™ Corian®, created using a new assembling technique reminiscent of mosaics: small rectangular elements in DuPont™ Corian® in black and white colours (Glacier White and Nocturne) are jointed together with metal rods to create a sort of “flexible surface”.

In realising “CORIAN® loves MISSONI” exhibition, Rosita Missoni, Luca Missoni (Rosita’s son & the project supervisor) and their design team have worked in close collaboration with architect Massimo Fucci, consultant of DuPont Surfaces to the architect and design sector, who coordinated the whole project and the creative contents.

For more details and images, visit Corian’s website. For more about MissoniHome, visit missonihome.com.

Art Direction: Rosita Missoni; supervision: Luca Missoni
Organizer/sponsor: DuPont™ Corian®
General project: MISSONI
Project manager: Arch. Massimo Fucci, DuPont™ Corian®
Partners:
Artemide (lighting solutions)
Boffi (kitchen and bathroom)
Listone Giordano (flooring systems)
Moroso (furnishing)
Zehnder Group/Runtal (radiator technology)
Hasenkopf (fabrication of DuPont™ Corian®)
TechLab Italia (fabrication of DuPont™ Corian®)
Esarc Hi-Tech (invisible audio systems)
Antica Gelateria del Corso/Nestlé (decorative ice cream compositions, served throughout the showroom and during the show)

Bookmark