Prominent designer helps to assure the success of KBIS
Alan Zielinski’s ascendency to national office at the National Kitchen & Bath Association coincided with a pivotal time for the NKBA and the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show (KBIS), the association-owned trade show.
Zielinski, an accomplished designer whose company has served the Chicago market for six-plus decades, was instrumental, as 2012 NKBA president, in helping guide the association through a critical negotiation which allowed it to co-locate the then-foundering KBIS with the similarly recession-challenged National Association of Home Builders’ International Builders Show (IBS). The decision has been widely credited for reversing the fortunes of the industry’s two most important trade shows.
Zielinski, whose Niles, IL-based Better Kitchens Inc. was established in 1956 by his father Ed – a founding member of the American Institute of Kitchen Dealers, forerunner to the NKBA – has also seen his design projects grace the pages of multiple publications, and has been associated with a litany of celebrity chefs, including Martha Stewart, Emeril Lagasse and Mario Batali.
He is also an accomplished commercial pilot, certified flight instructor and Federal Aviation Administration-designated examiner who has piloted single-engine planes, corporate jets, vintage aircraft and hot-air balloons.
