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Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS) 2021 Products

I’ve been putting together KBIS show issues since 1994. Writing up new products from the show has always been one of my favorite things. 

I’m fascinated by the way styles shift and evolve, by technology, by color, by the blending of form and function. I’m the kid in the candy store who has to touch everything; the first time I saw an open waterfall faucet, I literally had to be dragged away.

So the idea of a virtual show left me with mixed feelings. I had the great good fortune of being able to preview many of the products in Zoom meetings with the manufacturers prior to the show, and I even got to share some of my favorite products in a recent article in Forbes, written by KB Designers Network member Jamie Gold.

While it wasn’t quite the same as being there, it was nice to get my “show product fix.” (My computer screen still has the fingerprint marks from trying to touch a surfacing material that just looked particularly yummy!) 

Unfortunately, most people didn’t get their show product fix when the technology behind the virtual platform hit a snag. So writing up the new products suddenly became critical. 

I wanted designers who missed it to have the chance to see what I saw, to fall in love with the colors, textures and finishes, if even just through their computer screens. I wanted them to find themselves smitten by the curve of a faucet, charmed by a handblown glass pendant light, intrigued by a pull-out table that creates space out of nowhere. I wanted them to covet the do-everything appliances, or see all these blues and greens and eye-catching mixed finishes and imagine all the things they could do with them. I wanted to show them all the products I saw, building blocks for dreams.

But while I don’t have a virtual trade show platform, I did have a wealth of product information about all of the biggest introductions planned for KBIS. So we at KB Designers Network took all of those products we’d seen and told their stories, and compiled them into our KBIS Products Special Issue, which you can receive for free as a member of our email list by signing up and clicking the link in the Welcome email (if you are already a member then you’ve received your copy).

We decided to offer complimentary access to the entire industry (with an expanded version for KB Designers Network members, which can be accessed through our member portal!). And we hope people will share this issue so everyone who didn’t get to see all those new products will get to enjoy a sneak peek!

In time, there will be live events again, and hopefully it won’t be too long before we can go back to seeing and touching all the products in person. I’m a tactile person, and if you work in design, you probably are, too. But if 2020 taught us anything, it’s how to adapt, and we continue to need those skills as we navigate 2021.

So we invite you to check out our favorite KBIS products, and hope we’ll all be enjoying them together, in person, for 2022!

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