After a sweltering few days at InstallerSHOW 2026 in Birmingham, UK, I’ve returned home to Vancouver, BC, and I’ve been thinking. Thinking about what makes an event like this matter, beyond the size of the halls and the number of people through its doors.
The InstallerSHOW’s roots are deeply embedded in plumbing, heating and HVAC. This remains its foundation, but it’s now growing into a place where all types of skilled tradespeople can learn, meet, share their experience and understand where their industry is heading.
Installer Interaction
This year, plumbing, heating, HVAC, kitchens and bathrooms were also joined by the Painting & Decorating Show and the Professional Woodworking Expo. It felt like a real mecca for the trades involved in improving, building and maintaining homes.
A kitchen or a bathroom might begin with a conversation, a design and a product specification, but it all comes to life through a chain of skilled tradespeople. Cabinetmakers, installers, plumbers, electricians, HVAC professionals, and countertop fabricators all have a hand in what the client finally sees. They may approach their crafts differently, but they all affect the finished project.
In Birmingham, I hosted various conversations in the Brand Ambassador Hub and the Kitchen Fitters Arena around subjects such as working faster without cutting corners, marketing for installers, and the health risks associated with engineered stone dust. Each topic came back to the same thing: professionalism.
A good installer needs the skills to do the work, but they also need the skills to be able to plan, communicate, protect their health and understand the products they’re installing, all while building a business that customers, designers and manufacturers can rely on. This is the wider conversation InstallerSHOW makes room for.
My good friend, Eric Marshall, an NKBA Global Connect Advisor and co-founder of The Closet Training Institute, was also there, chairing conversations. His chats saw him primarily in the Professional Woodworking Expo and the Brand Ambassador Hub, hosting talks around cabinetry, woodworking, installation and fitted interiors.
We often speak about kitchen and bath, cabinetry, remodelling, contractors and the skilled trades as separate worlds. On a real project, they’re not. The tradespeople doing the work have to understand where the responsibility of one trade ends and where the next begins. The better they understand one another, the better the project tends to run.
Expanding the Installer Community
One of the most encouraging things I saw, or rather felt in Birmingham, was the growing sense of community around kitchen and bathroom installation. When kitchens and bathrooms first became part of InstallerSHOW back in 2024, for me, it was an exciting addition. This year, it really felt as though the foundations of something more were beginning to form.
There were more installers sitting down for sessions and more tradespeople sharing honest knowledge from their experience on-site. People could share their own wisdom, ask questions and gain an understanding that they were part of a wider trade community.
Two female carpenters, Emily Kitchin and Victoria Pirozzolo, were a big stand-out success for me. I had the chance to share the stage with both of them, and what came across was not a polished version of trade life. They spoke openly about the work, the learning, the hard parts and the mistakes that help you get better.
Both are doing excellent work, building businesses and helping give carpenters and installers a more visible face. They’re also the kind of tradespeople that younger people can watch and recognize themselves in.
For a young girl who may never have considered a future in carpentry or K&B installation, seeing Emily and Victoria on stage can make a massive difference. It can turn an idea that felt distant into something that feels very possible. They’re not telling anyone the work is easy. They’re showing that it is worth learning, that there’s room to build a career and that there’s a big community around you, encouraging you, while you do it.
This is why the right trade ambassadors matter. The value is not in a name or an online following. It’s whether they have something real to share, whether people will trust them and whether they can help others see a route into the skilled trades.
Growing the International Presence
The North American kitchen and bath industry has an opportunity here. We have good designers, strong manufacturers, excellent showrooms and talented installers. But we should create more opportunities for the people who design, make, sell and install to hear from one another, not as separate parts of the project, but as people who each have a hand in its success.
InstallerSHOW is still new in the United States. It launched in New York earlier this year, and InstallerSHOW Chicago will take place October 28-29 at McCormick Place, co-located with Chicago Build. It’s an HVACR-focused event, not a kitchen and bath show, and it doesn’t pretend to be otherwise.
But that doesn’t mean K&B people should ignore it. Designers, retailers with installer teams, manufacturers, custom cabinet shops and remodelers can all benefit from spending more time in a trade-led environment. The most useful conversations are often not the ones you expect to have.
Miami Build will launch in 2027 with an HVACR Zone powered by InstallerSHOW. This tells me the idea of bringing practical learning, trade voices and real business conversations together is gaining ground.
Birmingham reminded me that the strongest trade events do more than show products. They help people see their place in an industry, meet others who understand the work and think more clearly about where they are heading.
Chicago is the next chance for North American design professionals to step into that conversation with tradespeople. For the kitchen and bath industry, it’s a conversation worth following.
—Mark Conacher is CEO of KBB Momentum, a consultancy specializing in kitchen and bath installer and retail businesses.
