This week in design, a new movie starring Tom Hanks is set entirely in the living room of a Victorian home, documented through all its changes from 1900 to 2020. Stay in the know with our weekly roundup of headlines, launches, events, recommended reading and more.
Business News
Despite hopes that the Federal Reserve’s recent rate cuts would drive down mortgage costs, homebuyers are not yet feeling any relief. As The Washington Post reports, the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has gradually climbed over the last five weeks, landing at 6.72 percent by the end of October. Experts now project that mortgage rates will remain elevated in the near future, followed by a gradual decline in rates through the rest of 2024 and 2025 that’s expected to “normalize” the housing market, according to Jerome Powell, the Fed chair.
A new study by the National Retail Federation says U.S. consumers stand to lose between $46 billion and $78 billion in spending power annually if the Trump administration’s proposed tariffs are implemented. According to Home Accents Today, the report examined how a 10 to 20 percent tariff on foreign imports and a 60 to 100 percent tariff on Chinese imports would affect six consumer product categories (apparel, toys, furniture, household appliances, footwear and travel goods). For the home sector, the study found that consumers would spend $8.5 billion to $13.1 billion more for furniture and $6.4 billion to $10.9 billion more for household appliances—a $2,000 mattress and box spring set, for example, would cost $2,128 to $2,190. Meanwhile, as Furniture Today reports, a number of furniture importers have already begun reacting to possible tariffs. For some companies, it’s still too early to take action—though executives from brands like Martin Furniture and A-America expect the added costs from the policies to be passed on to consumers, while Flexsteel, which imports mainly from Vietnam and Mexico, anticipates the tariffs to be “disruptive” and is currently making contingency plans.
Lovesac has agreed to a $1.5 million settlement in a lawsuit filed by the Securities and Exchange Commission, which alleged that the furniture retailer and two of its former employees violated accounting practices, Furniture Today reports. According to the complaint, former CFO Donna Dellomo and former controller Yoon Um did not properly record the cost of shipping products from the company’s distribution center to end customers, failing to document invoices for $2.2 million in products shipped between 2023 and 2024. The SEC alleges Dellomo and Um concealed the missing expenses to avoid a restatement of Lovesac’s 2023 filings and gave “false and misleading” information to its outside auditors. According to a statement Lovesac officials shared with The Middletown Press, the company “voluntarily self-reported and cooperated fully with the SEC in its investigation” and has “taken significant remedial steps to improve its internal controls and ensure the accuracy of its financial statements.”
Green Theme Technologies—a New Mexico–based startup specializing in sustainable textile finishing technology—has completed a $6 million Series C funding round, Home Textiles Today reports. The company plans to use the funds to develop Empel, a PFAS-free alternative to traditional textile treatments that uses significantly less water.
Ikea’s parent company, Inter Ikea, boosted its profits in 2024, even after implementing price cuts and reporting a subsequent decline in revenue, Reuters reports. The price reductions—an effort to draw customers back in after supply chain disruptions led to price hikes in 2021 and 2022—reduced the retail giant’s revenue by 8.9 percent for the financial year ending August 31. Still, Inter Ikea says the initiative spurred customers to buy more, increasing operating profit to $2.4 billion this year (up from $2.3 billion in 2023).
Launches and Collaborations
Nou, the vintage e-commerce site launched by content creator Alexia Ioannou, has announced the debut of its first foray into home. The venture was created after Ioannou and her mother spent time scouring the internet for heirlooms lost during a period of family separation, which led to the launch of a brand centered on offering rare designer vintage shoes, apparel, and accessories. Its current category expansion follows a summer spent sourcing in Provence, France, leading Nou to emerge as a one-stop lifestyle destination. The result is the Objects of Affection collection, consisting of 66 pieces ranging from vintage glassware and vases to tabletop items and decorative accents.
Recommended Reading
For many years, the kitchen was a workstation hidden from public view—and while today the space is used as a place for living and hosting, it often retains much of the clutter that comes with preparing a meal. For The New York Times, Tim McKeough surveys a number of designers on their best design and organizational strategies for keeping a kitchen’s everyday detritus out of sight.
Smart home technology can make life easier by centralizing control of lighting, appliances, locks and thermostats in one device, but it’s exactly that quality of interconnectivity that makes a house vulnerable to hackers. For House Beautiful, Meghan Shouse asked security experts to explain how cybercriminals typically find weak spots in a smart home system and to offer the best ways to protect your data and devices.
In the lead-up to 2008, David Burt of investment research and consulting firm DeltaTerra Capital successfully bet that the subprime mortgage market would collapse—and now he’s betting against booming housing markets across the Sun Belt that he expects to go bust in the coming years in the face of intensifying climate change. As The Washington Post reports, DeltaTerra believes that within the next five years, roughly one-fifth of residential properties in the U.S. will decline in value as the costs of insurance, home maintenance and taxes for new infrastructure increase. As such, he’s putting his money on climate-resilient cities—from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to Chattanooga, Tennessee—expected to withstand increasingly volatile weather events, and buying buildings with an ability to survive extreme weather.
In Memoriam
Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus passed away last week at the age of 95. His journey to building the home improvement giant began when he met future co-founder Arthur Blank early in his career, while the two were working for another industry chain called Handy Dan. When the pair were fired amid a corporate reshuffling, they went on to establish the chain that would eclipse their former workplace, opening the first two Home Depot stores in Atlanta in 1979. Founded on the basis of assisting consumers in their DIY projects, the chain quickly rose to popularity, employing half a million workers by 1990. Marcus retired in 2002 as one of the richest people in the country. Known for his philanthropy, he gave more than $2 billion to projects ranging from the Georgia Aquarium to conservative advocacy groups. “When you look at other giant Big Box chains like Walmart, Target and even Costco and see how much different they are today than when they were founded, that may be Bernie Marcus’ greatest accomplishment and legacy,” writes veteran industry journalist Warren Shoulberg in WarrensReport.
