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The Past

Tabletop sales for 2001 decreased six percent from those of 2000. For all channels, the sales rolled in at $767 million, according to The NPD Group, a marketing information firm. Dinnerware sales were off as much as 18 percent at specialty channels, while department stores took a smaller hit with only a two-percent sales decline. In the flatware department, sales dropped eight percent in department stores to $220 million, while specialty stores generated $15 million in sales, which constituted a loss of 15 percent over the previous year.

But before you shut down your tabletop department, consider a few fast-growing segments. In housewares dinnerware sales, solid patterns grew by 17 percent, increasing their pattern share in this segment from 19 to 24 percent. In fine china dinnerware, holiday patterns' sales grew by 21 percent, increasing their pattern share from eight to 11 percent. In quality casual dinnerware, sales of holiday patterns grew by six percent, increasing their pattern share from nine to ten percent, and in stainless steel flatware, satin finishes grew by 22 percent, increasing their share of finishes (mirror vs. satin) from 18 to 24 percent.

In other words, to better market your tabletop department, you have to anticipate the curve. To accomplish this, you need to be acutely aware of the trends influencing how consumers set their tables at home, which cuisines will affect their accessory choices, and how their entertaining plays out in this category.

It's also important to understand the importance of merchandising to a particular lifestyle. Creating dramatic theme displays that catch customers' attention will depend upon your ability to make today's trends accessible with your group merchandising.

Many themes are available to retailers today to merchandise lifestyle trends — Asian, Mediterranean, Latin, Entertainment, Coffee, and Wine are just a few. Bundling a range of products from throughout your store to recreate vignettes of these trends will energize your tabletop department, your customers, and your sales.

Holiday Message

Obviously, holiday patterns' success makes them commodities that you should concentrate on. Holidays spell entertaining, not necessarily Christmas trees and Santa Claus. Much of the growth relies on the ability of manufacturers to create truly seasonal patterns consumers can also use for a wide range of special occasions.

"People can still celebrate the 'holiday season' without pinpointing a specific holiday. Evergreen and red will hold their own for the Christmas season, but frosted tabletop will definitely make an impact this Christmas season, too, as the market celebrates winter holidays as opposed to strictly Christmas," said Tony DeMasi, the National Tabletop and Gift Association's executive director.

"It's coming about because of the keen interest in entertaining at home. Consumers want to use their 'seasonal' dinnerware for just that, the winter season, not just a holiday. This dinnerware will go from Thanksgiving through Valentine's Day without a qualm," he continued.

Kathy Revello, director of merchandising for Panache Entertaining Catalog, is excited about the increase of holiday patterns introduced in the last two years.

"These designs definitely cover the spectrum from Santa to Holly to Amaryllis, and some of the best patterns are coming from the Zrike and Lenox companies," she said.

Carl Kroft, coowner of San Francisco, Calif.-based Dandelion, a specialty gift/gourmet store, merchandises his holiday tabletop in two distinct manners. At the start of the fall season, Dandelion's displays speak of tradition, family, and home.

"Thanksgiving is white tablecloths and full service," he explained, "Early in the holiday, it's based on the home and tradition and then after Thanksgiving, you shift to entertaining and parties."

Once into the holiday party theme, Dandelion displays are a festive conglomerate of opulence and celebration. Kroft prefers to present lower price-point items that his customers can buy without guilt.

"I think Holiday is more like buffet. We created a holiday theme with red pressed glass last year. It was beautiful and yet offered price points where you could buy a quantity of salad plates for not a lot of money," he said. "When it's oriented toward a buffet, you can create over-the-top opulence without a huge expense. Price is the important thing for customers who want to buy for only the holidays and then put it away for the rest of the year."

Lifestyle Patterns

Many tabletop companies are expressing their own interpretations of lifestyle trends like cocooning in hearth and home and small-scale home entertaining through their new product offerings. Among them are upscale versions of the TV dinner plate, innovative wok entertainment kits, and breathtaking ranges of sommelier wine collections.

Revello is watching her customer base closely and merchandising products that lead their lifestyles.

"People definitely have an average of more than two dinnerware patterns per household in order to do home entertaining, which is becoming more and more popular," she said.

Kroft's customers have embraced pressed-glass items, as well as stemware alternatives. He merchandises glass dinnerware designs for spring/summer sales, and more elaborate patterns, such as deep-red pressed-glass accessories for the holidays.

"Old-fashioned pressed glass is doing really well," he said. "It's a great spring-summer thing to use."

Kroft pays close attention to European trends and is intrigued by the use of stemless bowl-like shapes for glasses in France.

"They are using some wonderful casual alternatives with small glass bowls that sit on the table," he explained. "I love it. I think stemware is important for a formal occasion, but for everyday, it's not necessary."

Replacing the use of American stems for everyday may not translate everywhere, but Kroft said he does see a proliferation of saké and saké sets.

"I think Americans have finally discovered cold saké," he said. "It's great because it gives you a whole range of items to market."

As you struggle to weed through the trends that specific customers will enjoy, another important consideration is the production materials. How these items are made is just as important as the functions they serve. Consumers are increasingly aware of the materials available to them today. Products made of aluminum, cast alloy, polyprolene, acrylic, and other unbreakable materials are gaining in popularity. Manufacturing innovation has brought these materials out of the children's pantry and onto the guest list. Technological strides have made these products not only functional, but fashionable as well.

"Aluminum, or cast alloy, is the metal. Companies, such as Wilton-Armetale, have seen their products go from housewares sections to 'upstairs' tabletop sections in department stores, as well as being embraced by consumers in specialty stores and specialized chains," DeMasi said. "At the Frankfurt Fair in February, aluminum tableware was the rage and one of the few trends that traveled from the U.S. to Europe instead of the other way. Manufacturers have added such style to their products that the public couldn't ignore it."

The functionality and ease of use of these products has certainly contributed to that movement. What's not to love about serveware that's oven-to-freezer safe, easy to care for, unbreakable, and completely dishwasher safe?

Setting the table this year will involve a myriad of styles. Tabletop services need to be adaptable for a wide range of lifestyles and events from formal occasions to casual buffets.

"The important trend in dinnerware has been the continuing shift from formal to casual — our current lifestyle, but to a casual dinnerware with some sense of style, at least in the mid to up-market customer," Revello said. "The current major shift has been from the higher-priced Italian hand-painted look to the popular-priced hand-painted 'Italian look' now created in Asian countries. There has also been the trend to unusual-shaped dinnerware, also Italian-inspired, with a scalloped edge, or the 'free-form' edge, which is very popular with our customers currently."

Revello believes flatware trends will continue toward the European-sized flatware, with the most popular patterns being in stainless steel.

"I do see silver-plate flatware making a resurgence to go with the more 'casually elegant' dinnerware," she added.

Kroft studies restaurant trends to set the consumer's table. He sees a continuation in dinnerware of the oversized whites, plus a resurgence in popularity of the modern styles of designers like Russell Wright and Eva Ziesel.

White rectangular and oval plates — plates that frame the food — are leaping from restaurant tables to home settings. Kroft said large rectangular dishes allow people to move beyond traditional serving patterns, offering them the opportunity to serve an entrée and salad on the same plate.

"The large rectangle also serves for definition of space. Not everyone has a large dining table and large rectangle plates can sit on your lap," he said.

Michelle Lamb, founder of The Trend Curve, believes the next retail lesson will be illustrating to consumers how to mix not only patterns but also shapes on the table.

"We've gone beyond coordinating colors and patterns and carrying that mix-and-match process to shapes," she said. "Europe is doing this by taking different shapes and bringing them together to form one large place setting."

Designs introduced at Messe-Frankfurt's Ambiente showcased a variety of translations of this statement. Designers created dinner settings that are formed by placing half-moon dinner plates with two triangular salad/appetizer plates. Saucers serving as both lids and bases are other elements in this statement.

"These designs have energy," Lamb continued. "What I like about these unique shapes is that they provide consumers with a preapproved way of doing something unusual on the table."

She continued, "We're laying in a whole new concept. We've already mixed causal and formal, as well as different vendors, so now let's layer in shape. When we can become comfortable that a plate shaped like an eye is something we can eat on, as well as serve olives on, then we can see that different pieces can be used for different functions. What we're going to do is break some habits as we get comfortable with different shapes serving different functions."

Color Cues

The importance of color on the table is essential when considering the tabletop category. The cyclical natures of designs have particular shades rising and falling, but this year solids are making a major statement.

"There is a lot of interest in using color on the table and the counter contrast on that is the use of white. I see white, and the use of black and white coming back in a very important way," Lamb said. "Still, there are trendy colors and the way to incorporate them into the home is through tabletop. The table is a place where you can use oranges where you might not be able to use them anywhere else."

Kroft uses color as an accent. "While the color specialists always say that the trendy colors of fashion trickle down to the table, I don't agree. Food doesn't look great on red. Color depends on the food. That's why I think white becomes very important. If you want to use a really bright dish for pickles or a sauce, it can be used in conjunction," he said.

For the same reasons, Kroft sees white as the basis of the table, while DeMasi believes the trend this year will be glass dinnerware.

"Glass dinnerware will definitely be the statement of the year. Clear glass tableware is quite a bargain, allowing the customer to buy service for dozens, and it's extremely easy to clean since it's all dishwasher safe," he explained. "Retailers have said their customers are buying aluminum dinnerware and glass dinnerware for combined use. That is, the customer will put down the shiny aluminum dinner plate and then put a clear glass dinner plate on top of it, so the aluminum plate still shows through but there's no chance of it being scratched, or discolored by food."

Another placement of metal on the table is the delicate metallic trims of formal dinnerware. But formal may not be the only place we see these settings. Manufacturers are improving their metallic technology, creating both microwavable and dishwasher-safe trims.

DeMasi explained, "Upscale ceramic dinnerware manufacturers are improving their decorating techniques so that even many of their finest metallic-rimmed dinnerware patterns can be safely put in the dishwasher. The trick is the trim is now under the final glaze or a decal."

As far as the hot color of the year, the shift appears to be returning to gold. Though Europeans are wild about gold-trimmed patterns, American consumers are slowly accepting the trend.

"When we think of more formal tableware, I see the shift back in the direction of gold," Lamb said. "Gold has not gone anywhere, but it has been overshadowed by platinum."

All Things Retro

A great recipe for successful glassware sales is to take one part retro and two parts entertainment and mix well. Grandmother's Grasshopper and your great aunt's Pink Lady are back in style as retro cocktails reappear on bar menus and hostess party plans. After a decades-long hiatus, brash, colorful vodka martinis and cocktails are back in vogue big time.

Glass styles reminiscent of those of the fifties and sixties featuring playful color use are dressing the bar this year. Colors are pale shades of blue, green, red, and violet. All the essential accoutrements, such as shakers, stirrers, and pitchers, are included.

More than just celebrating the return of great glassware and cocktails, what might have once been considered "old-fashioned" table settings have been improved as well. In fact, it just might be your mother's table after all.

"In tableware accessories, I'm seeing an interest again in what I call limited-use pieces." DeMasi explained. "Deviled egg plates, pickle dishes, and condiment containers are becoming popular again. Sales of crystal salt and pepper shakers are on the rise, too."

Styles once considered collectibles are fast becoming everyday table fashions. The looks of milk glass, pierced ceramics, relief, and vintage collectible American dinnerware patterns are being rediscovered and recreated on everything from full place settings to accent pieces.

"Pierced ceramic compotes, trays, and other service pieces are coming on very strong. They give an elegant look at usually reasonable prices," DeMasi said. "Many of the top tableware companies either brought out or expanded their pierced products this season. Lenox and Royal Copenhagen instantly come to mind. At the Frankfurt Fair, the look was also very popular. This is a trend that will continue."

Besides reiterating the romance of bygone days, the "retro" table also promotes bolder colors and playful patterns. The shades here are typically orange and turquoise, lilac, and violet, plus there is the black-and-white theme. Such bold colors also perform well on the Latin table.

Your Setting

Specialty retailers need to market to their particular tabletop category niche. Wine, cheese, coffee, and entertainment trends fit the lifestyles of your customer base perfectly. Regardless of the season's trendy colors, chances are you already have in your inventory marketable items perfect for creating vignettes concordant with current lifestyle trends. Use them to create displays, promotions, and advertising around these trends to keep customers focused on your inventory.

Entertaining trends encompass everything from stainless steel spreaders to acrylic serveware to pressed-glass accessories. Complete a story focusing on an emerging cuisine and incorporate products required to make and serve a specific dish. For example, the Latin craze lends itself to a Paella Party Display. Bundle a paella pan into a vibrant red-and-black tabletop display, creating a snapshot of a festive culinary celebration.

Everyday living displays are also a snap with the bevy of products focused on the day's most important meal — breakfast. Bundle toasters, egg poachers, egg cups, small dessert plates, coffee cups, spreaders, juice cups, juicers, and butter dishes in a display that sells essential items for everyday use.

Numerous lifestyle concepts are available. If you're strapped for ideas, peruse recent culinary and home magazines. Use the travel, food, and home-decorating themes you know consumers are reading about and attempting to imitate to create your own merchandising style.

Do not stop with displays. Extend these ideas by noting inventory items in your newsletter or advertising campaigns. Provide customers with recipes for entertaining, schedule cocktail demonstrations, and educate them on how to entertain in their homes. Your expertise is a commodity for customers who want to create the best atmosphere in their homes. Pull up a chair and set the table — your guests are waiting.