Chicago, Illinois
Larry Witt is Officially Bestowed the American Prize for Design Given in Conjunction with the Good Design 2026 Program for Stewarding and Advancing the Vision of OXO, a Brand that Has Transformed the Domestic Landscape for Homes across the U.S. at the Presentation of the International Architecture Awards in Athens, Greece this September 18, 2026.
Since joining OXO in 1994, Larry Witt—President of Helen of Troy Corporation’s Home & Outdoor segment—has helped guide the New York–based brand, known for its thoughtfully designed household products, to sustained recognition, including consistent Good Design Awards honors. He is the recipient of the 2026 American Prize for Design.
Mr. Witt is an accomplished brand builder and innovation thought leader with a lifelong passion for design, creativity, and consumer‑centric problem solving.
An endlessly curious creator, he is a steward of innovation, with a focus on industrial design, user experience, innovation‑led brand strategy, and design thinking, and is widely known for fostering cultures of creativity and leading cross‑functional teams to do their very best work.
Over the past three decades, Mr. Witt, in close partnership with his longtime collaborator, Alex Lee and Davin Stowell of New York’s Smart Design, has helped to steward and scale the OXO brand into a global design and innovation powerhouse. Together with the broader team, they advanced OXO as a pioneer in universal design, creating ergonomic, accessible, and intuitive products designed for the widest possible range of users.
At OXO, everyday objects and activities are made things simpler, easier, more thoughtfully designed—better.
“If ‘Form Follows Function,’ the modernist principal coined by the famous Chicago architect Louis Sullivan,” states Christian Narkiewicz-Laine, architecture critic and president and CEO of The Chicago Athenaeum, “OXO has it totally right.”
Under Mr. Witt’s leadership, the company has emphasized functionality, research-driven prototypes, and user comfort, with the iconic OXO Good Grips kitchen utensils, setting a standard for modern, functional design.
“My role is to create an environment where talented people can do their best work and where ideas are challenged, refined, and ultimately made better for the people who use our products,” Mr. Witt states.
Since the brand’s inception in the early 1990’s, the best, award-winning work was and continues to be the Witt- Stowell collaboration, introducing more than 1,500 unique consumer products, setting new standards for universal design, usability, and everyday innovation.
Most notably, the OXO team developed the soft, over-molded Santoprene grip that created the most notable and distinctive design image for the product and provided tactile feedback and control to gripe, grab, or twist.
The added weight also helped to guide the motion for anyone with a disability.
The ensuing designs remain accessible, affordable, and playful, like all OXO’s products. They subtly guide your fingers to the right position. They give when you squeeze. It’s the root from which OXO’s Good Design philosophy grows.
“OXO’s famous soft rubber handle has evolved over the decades, becoming more streamlined and a tiny bit less unstylish, but nonetheless immediately recognizable to a design discerning audience,” continues Mr. Narkiewicz- Laine.
“Here the shape, design, or aesthetic of OXO’s products are primarily based upon their intended function or purpose, demonstrating that beauty solely arises naturally from utility rather than unnecessary ornamentation.”
“In fact, the products designed by Smart and manufactured by OXO have defined ‘Universal Design’ and ergonomics more than any other manufacture or company has successfully employed in these last decades.”
“Also, the OXO team added the concept of sustainable longevity,” emphasizes Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine.
“The durability of OXO products is also an important statement about sustainable utility—designs that never go out of style, that remain truly functional throughout the whole life cycle of each and every product manufactured by OXO.”
“For over 30 years, OXO has won numerous Good Design Awards making design history along with visionary car-makers Audi, Maserati, Lamborghini, Hyundai, and Ferrari.”
“In fact, starting in the early 1990s, the OXO Witt and Stowell design team produced products that became immediately iconic, instantaneously recognizable on any store shelf and in thousands of American kitchens.”
‘With the exceptions of the German housewares brand Braun or the English inventor James Dyson, no other mass consumer company in this early 21st-Century has ever achieved that status,” concludes Mr. Narkiewicz-Laine.
Given in conjunction with the Museum’s historic Good Design Awards, which were founded in Chicago in 1950, the American Prize for Design annually honors a specific design practitioner with the highest accolade for producing design that promotes design excellence, innovation, and lasting design.
Candidates for the American Prize for Design are submitted to The Chicago Athenaeum by design practitioners, members of the press, and educators from around the world, as well as by the Museum’s International Advisory Committee, composed of notable designers including Richard Meier, Adrian Smith, John Marx, James von Klemperer, Santiago Calatrava, Sergei Tchoban, Graft Architects, and the late Alessandro Mendini.
The Committee’s decisions are based on core criteria: design excellence, innovation, and contributions to humanity and to the public good.
The American Prize for Design is the highest and most prestigious design award in the United States.
Previous Laureates include Gorden Wagener, Mercedes-Benz Chief Designer and Executive Vice President at Daimler AG., British architect/designer Sir Norman Foster, Chris Bangle, Flavio Mazoni, Karim Rashid, Mario Porcinci, and Stacy Wolff, and Paolo Pininfarina.
Last year, Alberto Alessi was bestowed this prestigious tribute.
Larry Witt began his career in retail management, holding leadership roles with Dayton Hudson Corporation, Allied, and Federated Department Stores in the United States.
He joined OXO in the fall of 1994, where he played a pivotal role in shaping the brand’s product philosophy, design approach, and innovation practices—helping establish OXO as a benchmark for human‑centered design worldwide.
In 1994, when then brand was just under $10 million in revenue, he helped guide and drive the brand’s growth to become one of the leading brands in the home goods industry and the largest single brand in Helen of Troy’s portfolio.
At OXO, he has led sales, marketing, product development, industrial design, as well as engineering, R&D, DTC, and customer service.
As president, he also heads Helen of Troy’s Home and Outdoor segment over seeing a multi-brand, geographically dispersed global business.
He was also instrumental in Helen of Troy’s acquisition of Hydro Flask and most recently Osprey, overseeing the integration and stewardship of the business into Helen of Troy.
He is the driving force behind the segment’s ESG efforts tied to 1% for the Planet, Parks For All, and Design for Environment initiatives.
In 2017, Mr. Witt launched Hydro Flask’s Parks For All to enhance the awareness and appreciation of American nation’s parks and public lands and waters.
Through its partnership with 1% for the Planet, a global environment non-profit network in which member companies commit 1% of sales to environmental nonprofits—Mr. Witt has helped extend OXO’s purpose into measurable impact, supporting and helping scale a broad ecosystem of nonprofit partners advancing sustainable food systems, food recovery and access, and education, while reinforcing the brand’s commitment to making everyday life better through both product and action.
In 2021, he launched OXO’s Chef in Residence program, a platform that celebrates creativity, innovation, and simplicity in the kitchen by spotlighting a diverse mix of acclaimed and emerging culinary talent.
Through engaging content, including behind-the-scenes insights into chefs’ routines and practical techniques, the program demonstrates how thoughtfully designed tools can enhance everyday cooking experiences.
Beyond his professional work, Mr. Witt is the co‑founder, along with his wife Gretchen, of Cookies for Kids’ Cancer, a nonprofit organization, established after their son Liam was diagnosed with pediatric cancer and dedicated to raising funds for research focused on developing new, improved, and less toxic treatments for pediatric cancer—the number one disease killer of children in the United States.
To date, the organization has granted more than $23 million to leading pediatric cancer research centers, helping accelerate breakthroughs that save young lives.
OXO was founded by houseware’s mogul Sam Farber and his son John in 1990 and was inspired by a simple insight: Mr. Farber’s wife, Betsy, was struggling to grip traditional kitchen tools due to arthritis.
In partnership with Smart Design, the company developed its earliest products, including the now-iconic OXO Good Grips Swivel Peeler, which helped set a new standard for comfort and usability.
Immediately, Mr. Faber, now joined with Mr. Witt, worked with Smart Design to create the initial products in their new line, including one their first endeavors, the OXO Good Grips Swivel Peeler (1989) and a revolutionized version of a OXO Salad-Spinner (1998) both winning Good Design Awards in the early 1990s.
The peeler has since been recognized among the most important product designs of its time by Fortune and the IIT Institute of Design.
OXO changed ownership over time, becoming part of Helen of Troy Corporation in 2004.
Throughout this period, its collaboration with Smart Design helped establish the OXO Good Grips line as a benchmark for human-centered design in the mass market.
Building on this foundation, the brand continued to expand while remaining grounded in a simple idea: creating products that make everyday life easier.
Over the years, such products as the OXO Soft-Handled Can Opener (1997), the OXO Angled Measuring Cup (2001), the OXO Pop Containers (2007), the OXO Insulated SS Mixing Bowls (1995), the OXO Etched Box Grader with Removable Zester (2019), and the OXO Rapid Brewer (2024), have captured the most important, top design prizes in the world and almost yearly, the prestigious and historic Good Design Awards by The Chicago Athenaeum: Museum of Architecture and Design since the early 1990’s.
Other leading U.S. industrial design firms have also designed OXO products and won Good Design Awards: Marco Perry of Pensa for the OXO Good Grips Salad Spinner (2021).
In 2007, OXO extended its universal design philosophy beyond the kitchen and into the garage and workshop with the launch of the OXO Hardware Hand Tools line, designed in partnership with Smart Design. The collection reflected OXO’s broader belief that everyday products (regardless of category) should be more intuitive, comfortable, and accessible for all users.
The line introduced more than 20 thoughtfully engineered tools that reimagined common frustrations through ergonomic design and ease of use. Features such as soft, non-slip grips, spring-loaded handles to reduce strain, and intuitive one-handed functionality helped differentiate the collection from conventional hardware tools while reinforcing the brand’s core principles of comfort, usability, and thoughtful problem solving.
The expansion into hardware represented a broader evolution of the OXO brand, demonstrating that its design philosophy could extend far beyond kitchen tools into adjacent areas of everyday life.
“Since the initial launch of 20 kitchen tools, we’ve designed hundreds of products for OXO, helping guide and support them to new categories including cleaning, bath, laundry storage and organization, gardening and the OXO Tot children’s brand,” states Mr. Stowell.
“The degree of clarity to the OXO brand is quite rare. Most companies struggle to expand without losing what made them great in the first place. Not OXO.”
“This notion of ‘making everyday life easier’ has become the driving force behind everything OXO does, and it’s allowed them to expand into adjacent categories very successfully.”
“Most recently, we launched an inaugural line of electric appliances, OXO On.”
“Today, our partnership continues as we work to widen OXO’s lead as one of the world’s most admired and wonderfully comfortable housewares brand.”
“OXO’s success has been an unwavering dedication to the principles of Universal Design—the belief that products should be accessible by the broadest spectrum of users.”
“Together with OXO, we’ve visited hundreds of homes and spoken to thousands of people over the years to study how they use products,” concludes Mr. Stowell.
The official presentation of The American Prize for Design for 2026 takes place at a Gala Reception and Awards Dinner on Friday, September 18 during “The City and The World Athens Symposium” in Athens, Greece organized together with The European Centre for Architecture Art Design and Urban Studies along with recipients of the 2026 International Architecture Awards.
Tickets for the Ceremony and Dinner are available by contacting Konstadina Geladaki, Director of Communications at +30 210/342 8511 or by email at konstadina@europeanarch.eu.
A tribute to Larry Witt and OXO together with over 1,200 winning products from the 2025 Good Design Awards is published as a catalogue: 2025-2026 Good Design Yearbook edited by Christian Narkiewicz-Laine for Metropolitan Arts Press Ltd.
The catalogue is available through The European Centre by email konstadina@europeanarch.eu or at www. metropolitanartspress.com.
For press information and photographs, contact Jennifer Nyholm at jennifer@chicagoathenaeum.org.
