Trends can drive business - but how can you keep abreast of them?
Gifts Today, May/June 2009
I recently attended a talk about how to publish a book, by Kate Lock, author of Confessions of an Eco-Shopper. This may seem irrelevant to the gift trade, but there were some interesting parallels. Just as designers in the gift trade are finding it hard to attract work as the recession deepens, with many being made redundant, so are authors being shed by publishers. Many are finding it hard to get their latest work commissioned, and if you’re a new author, it’s especially difficult.
The book industry apparently has fashion trends just as do gifts. “Terrible childhoods” are now out, “uplifting personal stories” are in. “Eco” is out temporarily because too many books have been commissioned in the last couple of years; fairy and escape stories are in. What do you do if you’re an author and it takes two years to write a book?
Q. How do you keep up with trends – and is this important?
The answer for the author, says Kate, is to do what you really believe in. Follow your passion! If your heart isn’t in it, you won’t write a bestseller. This set me thinking. Is it the same as the gift industry? Many gift retailers will say it’s not. Gift retailing, they will say, consists of keeping up with the trends, giving the customers what they want.
They’re right of course – you need to know what the customer wants. But if you’re passionate about customer care and keeping up with the latest trends, that’s a passion in itself. The worst thing in retail is not to bother, not to change – to get stuck in the same old routine, without realising it.
If you’re really passionate about something, you may even start a new trend. Can you respond to something in the public eye that is not yet being catered for by current retailers? Taking risks, of course, is risky – especially in a recession! But that’s how the supermarkets, the Body Shop, and fair trade, one of the fastest growing sectors in the UK at present, started. They all started not with products but with a belief and with passion.
What’s next? I know of only two eco-shops in the UK, in London and Glasgow. I suspect there may soon be many more (will they be run by campaigners whose experience of retail is limited, or will they be started by people who know what they’re doing?) The issue of climate change is already high on the public agenda, and will become more so as the Copenhagen summit, which will replace the Kyoto protocol, approaches this autumn. Concern about global warming can only grow, and I believe sustainable, recycled and fair trade products are going to attract increasing support. Canny retailers are already taking note! If you show your customers you care, and you’re not just doing it to “greenwash” your business, you should thrive.
