This week in design, a 76-year-old Scottish gamer granny named Cath Bowie, who became a Twitch superstar after livestreaming herself playing popular games like Fortnite, Mario Kart and FIFA, has partnered with Ikea to promote its newest game room furniture collection. Stay in the know with our weekly roundup of headlines, launches, events, recommended reading and more.
Business News
Beyond Inc. will invest $40 million in The Container Store as part of a new strategic partnership. As Retail Dive reports, the collaboration will see an assortment of Bed Bath & Beyond brand kitchen, bath and bedroom merchandise at The Container Store locations, while the storage solutions retailer will begin selling its lines through the BBB website. The deal will provide much-needed financial assistance to The Container Store, which recently reported a year-over-year first-quarter sales decline of 12.2 percent along with growing net losses. For Beyond Inc., the partnership will put its flagship brand back in stores roughly 18 months after bankruptcy. (Its acquisition and relaunch by e-commerce platform Overstock has thus far been a digital-only initiative.) Meanwhile, the brand has more news on the brick-and-mortar front: Through a new partnership, Beyond Inc. and Kirkland’s will be opening up five small-scale, neighborhood Bed Bath & Beyond stores across the country, according to Retail Dive.
The monthslong legal back-and-forth between Charles Cohen of Cohen Brothers Realty—which owns design centers in New York, Houston, Los Angeles and Dania Beach, Florida—and the firm’s lender, Fortress Investment Group, featured a new installment last week. As The Real Deal reports, a judge ruled that the billionaire landlord is still on the hook for a $187 million personal guarantee he made to secure a mortgage for Cohen Brothers Realty in 2022, despite Cohen’s claims that his team and Fortress agreed via email to adjust the loan. He is appealing the decision. And the potential payout won’t take place until after Fortress holds its $534 million UCC (Uniform Commercial Code) foreclosure auction of Cohen-owned entities—including the Design Center of the Americas—scheduled for November 8.
The semiannual New York edition of Shoppe Object is relocating to the Starrett-Lehigh Building in West Chelsea for 2025. The event (next scheduled for February 2 to 4) will inhabit a 195,000-square-foot loft on the third and fourth floors of the building, a 30 percent increase in space from past locations, including Pier 36 and Skylight at Essex Crossing. The home and gift show’s twice-annual High Point Market edition returns this weekend.
Wayfair announced plans to close a 20,000-square-foot warehouse and outlet store in Florence, Kentucky, by the end of 2025, Home Accents Today reports. The move will result in the layoffs of 218 employees. “The store, which opened five years ago, never fully bounced back to pre-Covid success,” Joshua Hunt, the city’s administration director, told Northern Kentucky Tribune. “Given Wayfair’s broader financial struggles, including declining sales and layoffs, this outcome, though unfortunate, reflects the challenges the company has faced.” The Boston-based retailer—which is in the midst of a crucial inflection point in its 22-year history, and recently opened its first large-scale store in greater Chicago—did not comment on the closure.
In other Wayfair news, the company announced today the launch of a subscription-based program called Wayfair Rewards. For $29 a year, subscribers will receive 5 percent back in rewards from purchases at Wayfair, AllModern, Birch Lane, Joss & Main and Perigold, as well as access to member-only sales, early access to major sales, free shipping on all items, and a priority customer service phone line. The subscription replaces Wayfair’s existing credit card rewards program, and current cardholders will be automatically enrolled at no extra cost.
Across the country, September saw more homes finished than in the year prior, but fewer projects were started, causing mixed signals from the latest housing numbers. Nationwide, privately owned housing completion in September rose by 14.6 percent percent year-over-year, according to new data from the U.S. Department of Commerce. There were 1.7 million residential homes finished last month, an increase from 1.5 million the year prior, but a decrease from the revised August estimate of 1.8 million. In the same period, however, building permits and project starts slowed by 5.7 percent, with 1.4 million building permits issued in comparison to the 1.5 million the year before. As far as regional trends, the Northeast showed the most growth, with 180,000 projects started this September compared to last year’s 86,000.
Three weeks after Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina, furniture maker EJ Victor has announced it won’t be resuming manufacturing of its upholstery and case goods lines until January 2025, Home News Now reports. Despite the damage done to its production facilities and offices, where flooding left more than 2 feet of water, the brand will be at High Point Market with inline products in the showroom and floor samples available for purchase. It will also take orders for its Shamsian and Antonia collections, both of which will be shipped from locations not affected by the storm. “There are certain things that we had in process that would not make it to [High Point], but the market itself is going to be a very positive event, and a very powerful event. And we would love to have everybody come visit us,” CEO Richard Oliver told the news outlet. “We hate to have something like this happen, but we were in a place of strength when it happened which made the recovery process a lot easier than it would have been say a year or two ago.”
The country is heading for a home renovation surge, according to The Wall Street Journal. The combination of the forecasted falling interest rates and rising home values are causing people to borrow against their homes for renovations, leading to speculation that the worst of the remodel slump is in the past. According to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, spending should reach a rate of $477 billion by this time next year, creeping close to the record annual rate of $487 billion last year, before high interest rates caused spending to contract for the first time since 2008. Furthermore, a still-sluggish housing market is causing more and more buyers to fix up their own homes to suit their needs rather than move.
Launches and Collaborations
The Eames Institute of Infinite Curiosity has announced the debut of a new series of publications dedicated to documenting the iconic works of 20th century designers Ray and Charles Eames. The print catalogs will be organized thematically—under titles like Ray’s Hand, which includes a record of sketches and scraps from the designer’s work process—and are geared toward making the more than 40,000 objects from the organization’s inventory accessible to the public.
Joanna Gaines has released another round of textiles with Loloi. Designed in time for colder weather, the assortment includes 25 new rugs and 10 complementary throw pillows, each created with Magnolia Home’s rustic, cozy aesthetic in mind.
Heath Ceramics debuted a new secondhand marketplace for its products. The peer-to-peer platform, called Pass the Plate, will allow shoppers to purchase pre-owned pieces from other sellers, who can opt to receive cash or store credit in return.
Nourison Home, the floorcoverings and home decor manufacturer, announced a new partnership with fashion brand DKNY. All eight contemporary collections channel the iconic American style and New York energy the fashion brand is known for.
Recommended Reading
Singer Mariah Carey joins the list of personalities—Drew Barrymore and Australian TV host Gemma Driscoll among them—expressing their distaste for overhead lighting, a topic she expounded on as a guest on a recent episode of the podcast Las Culturistas. In The Washington Post, Rachel Kurzius explores the critiques that celebrities and experts alike have expressed of the style, and why the better, brighter lighting of today has made the infamous “glare problem” more drastic.
Designers are increasingly expecting clients’ children to get involved with home renovation projects, whether it’s picking out the wallpaper for their bedroom or suggesting items they want in the kitchen. For The Wall Street Journal, Jessica Flint talks to designers, parents and kids about an evolving conversation—and where Gen Alpha gets its taste in decor.
Climate change is not only causing more extreme natural disasters and temperature shifts across the globe—it’s also affecting buildings built for one climate that are now experiencing another. From stainless steel roofs seeping melted sealant intended for cooler weather to shifting foundations and warped shingles, Patrick Sisson explores in Bloomberg what such changes mean for current and future buildings and how to combat the effects.
After growing concerns and an influx of lawsuits over stone cutters suffering from silicosis, many companies that produce the engineered stone causing these issues have begun to market new, reduced-silica products. For the Los Angeles Times, Emily Alpert Reyes dives deep into the new products that have hit the market (especially in Australia, where the government recently banned the use of engineered stone) and how even with reduced crystalline silica, there may still be a risk to stonecutters.
In Memoriam
Curtis J. Moody—the founder and chairman of Moody Nolan, the country’s largest African American–owned architecture firms—passed away this month at the age of 73. Born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, Moody was enthralled with the architectural drawings of a family friend who was a contractor, an experience that later inspired his career in the home industry. Moody, who earned his bachelor’s degree in architecture from Ohio State University in 1972, founded his own firm, Moody and Associates, in 1982 and went on to partner with Howard E. Nolan two years later. He received numerous accolades throughout his career, including the Whitney M. Young Jr. Award and the American Institute of Architects Architecture Firm Award, the first African American–owned firm to receive the honor. “My dad’s vision was clear: Architecture could not only transform spaces but also uplift communities,” his son Jonathan Moody, who has led Moody Nolan since 2020, said in a statement. Moody is survived by his wife, Elaine, three sons and five grandchildren.
