At Trends, we try to discover… well, trends, before they take off. Now that we’ve been running the show for over a year, we can look back and see how we did.
For starters, we got a lot of things right, like…
- Reporting on e-bikes before they quadrupled in sales
- The whole skincare obsession and the rise of specific food products (like lab milk)
- D2C plants taking off
- Clout kitchens (before MrBeast gave them a whirl)
- Major trends like telemedicine, privacy-first tech, the sleep industry, and more…
A few of our predictions didn’t pan out, including starting a trade show, opening motels, or our bullish thoughts on this “new movie industry” (AKA VR).
Post-pandemic, we still see opportunities with trade shows, many of which have 30-50% margins. And VR is still primed to be big — preorders for the latest Oculus Quest were 5x its predecessor.
As a New Year’s bonus, we’ve ungated 12 of our top Trends pieces from the past year. For one week only, you can read the following pieces for free:
- January: How to Capitalize on the Fast-Growing Sports Gambling Industry
- February: Why Sleep Could Be the Next Mindfulness Revolution
- March: The Future Is Female Pleasure
- April: How to Build a Successful Product Launch with Nik Sharma
- May: Changing Hygiene Behaviors Create Fertile Ground for Startups
- June: The Future of Media & Pop Culture: 30 Companies Shaping the Media Landscape
- July: How Newsletters Make Money
- August: Lessons from Japan: 5 Trends You Can Trade On
- September: 27% Margins: Lessons From the Paper Notebook Business
- October: A 5-Part Framework for Building Your Brand Community
- November: 54% Profit: A Look Inside the Lucrative Storage Unit Business
- December: Esports: The Rise of the Next Behemoth in Competitive Sports
👀 Looking back, we can only be sure of one thing: The year started with esports and ended with esports.
