Marching ahead in the business of trend-spotting

July 22, 2009

Reinier Evers was a student of business policy at New York University in 1994 when he got fascinated with the online business revolution. Since then, he has become an accomplished trend watcher. In 2002, Evers set up Trendwatching.com. Headquartered in Amsterdam, this firm scans the globe for the promising consumer trends, insights and related hands-on business ideas. Assisting Evers is a network of individuals, called spotters, spread across more than 120 countries.

Evers is now busy preparing the next trend briefing, which will be available in the first week of September. "Stay tuned for 'transparency triumph' and 'openly opaque'. The former is about companies and organisations going completely transparent about performances and about their product prices. And there are several of them. As a result, consumers and brands are profiting.

Interestingly, every trend has a counter trend as well. So there is also a trend of consumers obviously not having the time always to research for the best price or the best quality. So there is a huge opportunity for brands to offer something that doesn't need transparency because you know that they are the best anyway. That is openly opaque," Evers told Financial Chronicle.

Evers finds Apple, the tech company that makes cool products but itself is anything but cool, as an openly opaque company. "They are not transparent and don't really share. But they offer superior quality products," he added.

It was Evers who coined the terms 'pop-up retail' and 'pop-up store'. According to him they started out as manifestations of consumers' ever more transient needs--the need for surprise, for uniqueness, for discovery and change.

Some of the consumers trends that Evers and his team have identified and collated mostly reflect the social, economic and political scenario of various geographies.
So 'foreverism' means the many ways that consumers and businesses are embracing conversations, relationships, and products that are never done. "It is about having a conversation with your customer," said Evers. Driving its popularity is technology that allows them to find, follow, interact and collaborate forever with anyone and anything .
Evers acknowledges the fact that the proliferating social media has a huge influence on identifying these trends.

ICICI Bank is among the 20 Indian companies that subscribe to the premium service. According to Evers, there are close to 4000 subscribers for trendwatching.com in India and they are largely from the metros. However, when it comes to the origin of visitors India ranks eighth.

« More articles about trendwatching.com and our trends