Moving Online: The New Trend In Trend Spotting

By Nichola Saminather of Columbia News Service (reproduced with kind permission)

Green is the new black, and the latest product to cash in on the
environmental boom is denim jeans, which are now made of hemp and
sugarcane, says treehugger.com, a Web site that follows environmental
trends around the world.

Wireless networks and comfy chairs are expanding the decade-old
trend of “being-spaces”–where people come to spend hours reading or
working–into supermarkets, airports and even hospitals, according to
trendwatching.com, a site that tracks consumer trends across the
planet.

And Mercedes-Benz plans to launch an “intelligent bike” with an
automatic gearshift system, reports PSFK.com, a Web site that reports
individual developments that contribute to larger trends.

These sites are manifestations of the latest in trend spotting–the
creation of an open and constantly available source of information
about developments in business, fashion, lifestyle and just about every
other aspect of life. Just as many trends evolve as they are affected
by newer trends, so these sites are responses to demands for
transparency and consumer participation spurred by today’s information
revolution.

But in this age when what was new yesterday is old tomorrow, what
makes a trend?

Netherlands-based trendwatching.com offers a definition:
“A trend is a manifestation of something that has newly serviced an
existing (and hardly ever changing) consumer need, desire, want or
value.” An example is the Internet, which is growing in response to
humans’ need for knowledge.

What about the current hot color, fabric or designer label? And what
is expected in 15 to 20 years? These do not a trend make, says
trendwatching.com. The former are fads, the latter, predictions. Also
not included is “cool hunting,” which involves discovering individual
occurrences that are unique and interesting, but don’t contribute to an
overarching trend.

Sticking to trend spotting under this definition prevents mistakes,
said Renier Evers, creator of trendwatching.com, in an e-mail
interview. “We don’t forecast, we describe, so no mishaps,” he said.
“We add our own thinking and insights and illustrate with real world
examples companies already capitalizing on those trends and
developments.”

To ensure that these examples are reliable, trendwatching.com has
five full-time employees with economics and marketing backgrounds who
research the latest thinking from psychologists, sociologists,
economists and business thinkers, and draw larger conclusions from the
8,000-plus contributions the site receives.

Trendhunter.com, a Canadian magazine that began in January, also
relies on a similar, albeit smaller, global network of 15 regulars.
Contributors are required to include the source of their stories, so
the editor in chief, Jeremy Gutsche, and two senior editors can verify
the information.

Michael Tchong, founder of ubercool.com, however, uses contributors
sparingly, preferring to track “ubertrends,” large trends that drive
smaller ones, mostly on his own.

So far, Tchong has identified seven ubertrends: "fountain of youth,"
the desire to put off ageing for as long as possible; "time
compression," where life is faster than ever; "generation X-tasy," the
normalization of vices like gambling, X-rated fare and drug use;
"unwired," the proliferation of wireless technology; "voyeurgasm," the
growth of real-time viewing, which has resulted in phenomena like
camera phones and reality television; "digital technology," possibly
the ubertrend of ubertrends; and the "woman acceptance factor," which
points to the growing role of women in today’s society.

One contributor to Ubercool is Jinal Shah, a freelance writer who
also supplies information to PSFK. Shah, who has her own fashion blog
at stylestation.typepad.com, started contributing because her innate
curiosity enabled her to spot the connection between isolated incidents
that make up a trend.

“Our generation, we’re creators,” said Shah, 23. “We know what we
want. We don’t need to be told to try something, we learn for
ourselves.”

Being a part of this generation, which is driving most of the current trends, makes her a resource for such sites.

What makes sites like the ones Shah contributes to different is that
they are so open with their information. Piers Fawkes, the P and F of
PSFK.com, explained: “We’re different from the old school, where they
gather information, have their secrets and sell that knowledge.”

Among the trend spotters in the “old school” is Faith Popcorn, who
has been the mainstay of the trend analysis industry for more than a
decade. Popcorn, author of the best-selling “Popcorn Report,” has a Web
site, but the only information it reveals is her contact details.

Sites like PSFK, Trend Hunter and trendwatching.com are accessible
to anyone, both readers and contributors, and contain immense amounts
of information. PSFK even links to other trend-spotting sites, and
trendwatching.com offers free advice on how to be an effective trend
spotter.

After all, Fawkes said, it is not the information itself, which PSFK
gets from about 30 global contributors, that keeps PSFK solvent, but
the advice it offers based on that data.

George Murphy, founder and chief executive of Modo Group, a
consulting firm that offers branding and consumer insights to companies
like Microsoft and Starbucks, said the social networks surrounding the
blogging world, in which companies like PSFK exist, gives the
information they unearth a “more gritty, street level” quality.

PSFK also reaches people in their own environments, in bars and at
football games, rather than in more artificial settings like focus
groups, which are the realm of traditional market researchers.

Tchong of Ubercool points to another reason that businesses turn to
companies like his. “I move in many, many circles,” he said. “They move
in only one. And I acquire a radically different perspective because my
instincts have been honed over time.”

Such honing, however, comes only with a constant thirst for
knowledge and the ability to digest and analyze vast amounts of detail,
gained through reading, writing, traveling and observing.

Gutsche sums it up: “I’ve always been insatiably curious and
obsessed with innovation. Now I find myself trying to more deeply
understand the social factors that push a new product or style into the
mainstream. Part of my interest derives from the fact that I’m an
entrepreneur at heart and I want to invent, market or design the next
big thing.”