Renovate Rather than Buy: American Homeowners

A new study offers encouraging news for the building trade when it comes to home repairs and remodeling. The steep decline in new home starts is a well-known fact that is creating issues for the construction and building sector, but U.S. homeowners may be offering some good news for the trade: they are planning to […]

New Energy Star NextGen Program Debuts

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency has just launched its EnergyStar NextGen Certification Program designed to increase energy savings. A new voluntary certification program for the residential new construction sector is now up and running from the EPA, designed to increase national energy and emissions savings. It addresses a multitude of construction areas, including heat pumps, […]

Saving One Trillion Trees Isn’t as Easy as It Sounds

Billionaire Mark Benioff, who runs the giant software company Salesforce, is having trouble meeting his goal of saving one trillion trees by the end of the decade. In 2020, Benioff was sitting in his office in the Salesforce Tower in San Francisco—the tallest building in the city—when the smoke and haze from northern wildfires clouded […]

Home Depot Quarter Financials Show Business Still Tough

Even as there are encouraging signs in the housing economy bottoming out, the big DIY chain is still showing a sales slowdown. If you subscribe to the theory that Home Depot is the canary in the home improvement coal mine – granted a very big canary – then its financial results earlier this month indicate […]

IFS Coatings Set to Debut New Coatings for IWF 2024

New, smoother formulations will be the stars of the new powder coatings the company is set to introduce this summer. “Newer, smoother, better.” That’s how IFS Coatings describes its new line-up of powder coatings for HDF, MDF, hardwoods and other engineered wood products that it will introduce at the International Woodworking Fair this August in […]

Business Collaboration and Design Trends

The traditional model of vertically integrated manufacturing, where a company produces all components of a product in-house, is transitioning to a collaborative model linking two or more companies in joint pursuit of mutually advantageous opportunities—especially in industries such as furniture manufacturing. This shift not only optimizes resources but also fosters greater innovation and agility in […]