Maker’s Spotlight: Be Home By Jess Schmidt

{Sponsored} Beauty and function combine in every product the designers at Be Home create. The eclectic aesthetic, created by teams of designers in the U.S., Benelux and India plus several other regions around the globe, focuses on collaboration and displaying different perspectives in finished goods.

Co-founder and CEO Jonathan Hankar believes it is “important for us to really try to connect so that the artisan and the product with the whole customer, the wholesaler, the retailer and also the end consumer.” Each item the Be Home teams create needs to be beautiful enough to display on the counter but practical enough that it won’t collect dust.

Hankar, a native of Belgium now living in the U.S., pulls a thread of the Belgian aesthetic through everything Be Home offers. The simplicity of the European style means that the materials stand out as a conscious design choice. Their collection is only shown at Atlanta Market at AmericasMart, at Las Vegas Market, online and in their catalog.

The Be Home line contains “Lots of natural materials. We want to make sure we stay close to what nature is already offering us. We do not want to depart too much from that. We keep simple lines, neutral lines in most of our products,” Hankar said.  

Many items are wooden, recycled glass or metal. These materials have a great deal of diversity in textures, colors, densities and finished appearance, giving movement and life to inanimate objects. In the latest Atlanta Market, in January 2021, the recycled glass products made by artisans in India were some of Be Home’s top sellers. They were created by reusing glass soda bottles and re-blowing them into fifteen or twenty new shapes, including items for the bar and cocktail glassware, which aren’t often items made with recycled glass.

Be Home’s artisans create new items at a fairly large scale each year. Besides the half of their products that they create custom for independent customers, Be Home shows their core collection at Atlanta Market and Las Vegas Market, as well as in a catalog and on their website. Each year, they create about 200 new products, half for each market session. Additionally, they create at least that many customized products, including items with runs as small as 250.

Hankar encourages his customers to visit in January and July at Atlanta Market or Las Vegas Market in April to ensure they can get the latest goods in their

stores. “Every season brings something new and exciting for buyers and customers to look at. We continue to expand on materials and countries of origin, currently with eight countries represented,” Hankar said.

To see the Be Home collection in person, visit their Atlanta Market showroom (Building 2, Floor 9, Showroom 911A) or Las Vegas Market showroom (C135).

For more details about Atlanta Market and to check out all the brands and showrooms there, visit Atlantamarket.com.

For the scoop on Las Vegas Market’s vendors, visit Lasvegasmarket.com. 

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