Sustainability and venerable product design were some of the hot commodities drawing attention at the 2008 International Home and Housewares Show, the world's largest housewares trade marketplace hosting more than 60,000 attendees from 100 countries including a record-breaking 23,000 registered buyers. The country's top design experts, consumer researchers and innovative displays focused on today's important "green" topics including sustainable packaging; incorporating eco-friendly materials for sustainable design; bringing environmental responsibility to the design process; encouraging corporate "green" initiatives; clarifying "green" to willing, yet wary, consumers; and more.

The International Home and Housewares Show is the world's largest marketplace of home supply professionals. Every year 60,000 of the world's most important industry professionals gather to do business in Chicago's state-of-the-art McCormick Place Exposition Center. These buyers represent the largest single home products and housewares market in the world. U.S. consumers purchase over $75 billion of the products displayed at the Show annually. U.S. Buyers represent diverse retail channels including the fast-growing specialty channels. Retailers such as Linens' n Things, Bed, Bath and Beyond, Federated Department Stores and other specialty focused independent retailers attend in large numbers.

“Our booth in the heart of the Global Crossroads Pavilion showed the Alibaba.com site to its best advantage,” said David Wang of Alibaba.com. “Being located with many of the other international exhibitors at the show meant that we easily reached those buyers who were most interested in finding international suppliers. Overall this was a fantastic show for us. Existing members were excited to learn about the new tools available to help their search for suppliers, while those new to the site were thrilled by the way Alibaba.com could expand their search for new products and suppliers.”