The Inspired Home Show, the International Housewares Association's annual trade show, is leaving McCormick Place in Chicago after 66 years. From January 2028 it moves to AmericasMart Atlanta under an eight-year deal with Blackstone-owned ANDMORE, changing city, month and format at once: half the show will sit in permanent showrooms that stay open all year.
For anyone running a trade show, that last part is the story. A show that once existed for three days in March is becoming a neighbourhood inside a building that trades every day.
What exactly was announced?
ANDMORE and the International Housewares Association (IHA) announced the partnership on 28 September 2026. The Inspired Home Show will be co-located with Winter Atlanta Market, AmericasMart's gift and home show, debuting on 11 to 16 January 2028. The last Chicago edition runs on 9 to 11 March 2027.
According to ANDMORE, the show's space will split evenly between permanent showrooms and trade show floor, placed in "neighbourhoods" beside related categories so buyers can cross-source. It says the deal grows AmericasMart's dedicated housewares and tabletop footprint tenfold, and puts the show's exhibitors alongside more than 6,000 existing gift and home brands. TSNN's interview with ANDMORE's chief revenue officer adds an International Sourcing Pavilion, a renovated demo kitchen and an IHA Welcome Center, and HomePage News, IHA's own news platform, carries the same terms.
How big is the thing being moved? It depends which number you read. The press release describes more than 10,000 retailers and industry professionals and 1,000 plus exhibitors a year. IHA's timeline, as reported by TSNN, puts the 2025 edition at roughly 30,000 attendees and more than 1,600 exhibiting companies across 1.5 million square feet. Those count different things, buyers versus everyone through the door, which is a small reminder that "attendance" is never one number.
Why would a 66-year-old show leave its home?
ANDMORE's pitch is about trips and timing. Winter Atlanta Market is where many retailers set their sourcing direction for the year, so a housewares buyer can cover the category in the same January visit instead of booking a separate trip in March. For exhibitors, the argument is that a permanent showroom sells every day the campus is open, rather than being built, used for three days and binned.
There is a precedent. In 2023 the International Casual Furnishings Association moved its Casual Market, a show more than 60 years old, to AmericasMart under the same model. ANDMORE says it expanded exhibit space by 50% before the first edition because demand outran its projections, and that the casual and outdoor footprint reached nearly 400,000 square feet within five months. Those are the operator's own figures, but they explain why IHA was willing to listen.
One lesson ANDMORE says it carried over: the show keeps its own name and branding, and is presented as IHA's event hosted on the campus, not absorbed into the market.
A trade show used to be a place you went. This one is becoming a place that is always open.
What this means for event organisers
Most organisers will never move a show of this size. But the decisions inside this one are the same ones any trade show team faces when the venue, the date or the audience changes, and they sit squarely on exhibitor and sponsor management and on analytics and reporting.
Tired of Fee Announcements? Go Flat
eventcloud charges one subscription with no per-ticket fees, so platform news stops being budget news.
Your attendee record has to survive the move. When a show changes city and month together, last year's registration data is your best predictor of who returns, and the easiest thing to lose. Before any relocation, export the full history in a format you control, keep your own record of who came, and plan to compare the first new edition against the last old one by segment, not just by headcount. Our guide to getting your data out of an event platform covers what to ask for.
Co-location raises an ownership question. When your show runs inside someone else's market, decide early who holds the registration, whose badge the buyer wears and who may email them afterwards. "We will sort it out later" is how organisers end up renting access to their own audience.
Exhibitors are being offered a different deal. A permanent showroom turns a booth fee into something closer to a lease. If you sell stands, expect exhibitors to start comparing your three days against year-round exposure, and be ready to show them the numbers that prove your days are worth it. Collecting exhibitor registrations separately from buyers makes that reporting far easier.
A show that has moved before, and survived worse
This is not the show's first relocation. According to IHA's own history, the first organised housewares show was held in Chicago in 1928 and moved through hotels and Navy Pier before settling at the newly opened McCormick Place in 1961, when it drew more than 900 exhibitors and 33,000 attendees. In 1967 fire destroyed McCormick Place the night before the show opened, and the event carried on at alternative venues.
The difference this time is structural. Every earlier move swapped one temporary hall for another. This one swaps a temporary hall for a permanent market run by a venue operator, and it is part of a wider pattern: TSNN notes that Blackstone, ANDMORE's owner, has spent the last decade buying across the trade show world, from organisers such as Clarion Events to production company Encore and event software company Cvent. The businesses that host, equip and run events are increasingly sitting under the same roof, sometimes literally.
The quiet question underneath: what happens to cost as audiences combine?
Co-location is a growth play. More buyers in one building, more reasons to come, more registrations flowing through the system. That is great news unless your registration software charges by the head, in which case the combined audience also arrives as a bigger invoice.
That is the part we would plan for early. eventcloud prices by user, not by attendee, with unlimited events, tickets and registrations on one flat subscription, so a show that doubles its audience does not double its software bill. It is built for in-person events only, and white-label branding sits on the Enterprise plan rather than the Team plan. If you run registration for exhibitions, our trade shows page sets out how it works.
