It’s a fact:
Trends in the world of home furnishings drive retail business.

To visualize how trends affect shoppers, imagine a pyramid. At its base, supporting everything above, are global trends, macro concepts truly worldwide in their reach. At mid-level in the pyramid are influential trends, those that start shoppers thinking about their next purchases: Color, prints and patterns are the frequent drivers of these trends, particularly among home softgoods. And at the pyramid’s point are key items and fads: specific, tangible, sometimes short-lived, but acute.

Here’s how one example, culinary trends, can affect the world of home furnishings à la the pyramid:

First, a global trend: Lean economic times spur home cooking and dining. That’s certainly true today. Both individuals and families are increasingly cutting their visits to high-priced restaurants, opting instead to cook and eat at home.

Not only do they enjoy the immediate positive effect on their budgets, but the cooking itself, which many discover to be fun and fulfilling. And with just a little practice, home cooking, they find, can produce sophisticated results.

Digging back to the roots of sophisticated home cooking, credit must be awarded to Julia Childs, television’s first chef. Previous to the trend, home cooking was considered by many to be an endless repetition of long-tested standards: meat and potatoes, obligatory greens, and, for the adventurous, occasionally pasta. From Childs’ debut onward, TV chefs’ expansive offerings have included exotic cooking, epicurean competitions, chef-endorsed kitchen tools, and entire television food networks.

Retailers, meanwhile, have willingly engaged in a culinary give-and-take over the last 40 years, first providing tools to help home chefs imitate the pros, then acting as a conduit for the pros themselves by carrying such items as Emeril Cookware, Paula Deen spatulas, and Rachel Ray cookbooks.

Next up, one example of a mid-level trend: healthy cooking. Sometimes elusive, the mid-level trend is aspiring but more specific than the global trend and often more regional. Thus, healthy cooking can mean anything from increased use of fresh ingredients to portion control to greaseless frying.

A customer willingly notes this trend and feels positively about its inception in her life. She considers how she can act on it and how it benefits her family. How will she participate? How will she bring it to fruition while simultaneously fitting it into her schedule, her budget and her tastes?

Pinpoint it! Here’s where a key item or fad motivates a customer to take out her wallet, compelled to do so, not by external pressure, but by her own desire. The global trend (saving money by home cooking) and the mid-level trend (healthy cooking) provide her the support and rationale for making a purchase.

So, what are a few of the key items or fads at the top of today’s pyramid?

• Bite-sized desserts: More healthful and cultured than your childhood’s heaping bowl of ice cream, these desserts— mini éclairs, cupcakes, mini creampuffs—are fun to prepare at home, and wonderful to present to your guests.

• Oatmeal: Sweetened with maple syrup, brown sugar or fresh fruits, this wholesome comfort food, complete with rustic steel-cut texture, is showing up at Starbucks, Jamba Juice, and other fast-food outlets.

• Tea: Simple, inexpensive and healthful, tea provides a fertile ground for all types of experimentation and newness. A cup of tea gives a customer a chance to create an item at home that tastes and looks every bit as good as she enjoys at restaurants. Indeed, an afternoon tea offers a free-flowing opportunity for presentation to friends and family.

Be they global, mid-level, or key, trends offer a roadmap to profitable sales. By planning, sourcing and executing a trend, retailers drive more sales at regular price, add excitement to their assortments, and give shoppers a reason to buy, with little risk of investment.