Today we have a guest post from Vicki O’Dell, who blogs over at The Creative Goddess! She’ll be telling us about some of the hottest trends for summer and fall and showing you how to find even more trends for your crafting business. Be sure to check out her blog for more great posts and craft tutorials!
Planning a season or two in advance is key to successful product development, sales and marketing.
But how do you plan so far in advance? To help you plan ahead consider these questions.
First of all, the world has recently wrapped up their fall fashion weeks and there are thousands of images online for you to browse. What colors, styles and textures do you see cropping up again and again? Your customers will need accessories for all of those fantastic outfits they will be buying and sooner or later elements of those styles will work their way into home decor too. How can you work these trends into your products?
Pinterest has a 2016 trend board and the site Fashionista shares some popular looks. Of course Vogue has a gazillion photos to look at too.
What is going on in the world these days that will affect your product this summer and fall? The US election? The economy or housing markets? It seems like one time period from history or another is always at the forefront of everyone’s mind when it comes to trends. What will it be this fall?
This article from Etsy is predicting the 1970’s and Comforting Textures will be big this fall. And here is a list of color trends for 2016 from Fashionisers.com that you might find helpful.
What holidays are coming? Mothers and Fathers days, Memorial Day, Fourth of July, Back to School, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. Maybe your town or state fair is a big event or your town hosts a big name sports team. Be sure to have products ready far in advance so you have plenty of time to photograph them and market them.
Remember that customers need to order in advance for shipping and if you sell products that customers use to MAKE gifts or decorations they will need even more time before the actual holiday or event to create their goods.
Trend spotting and especially trend forecasting is a huge business. Everyone from fashion houses to bead manufacturers want to get their hands on upcoming trend information. There are several companies that offer a professional trend forecast or report and they charge huge sums for them. But you can simply do a search online for “2016 Fall Fashion Trends” and look at all of the information that comes along.
Keep an eye on Pinterest for trends as well as Instagram. If you follow enough models, designers, creators and marketers you can easily have an idea of what will sell this summer through fall. Follow the leaders in your niche or a market you are interested in exploring and they will lead you where you to the information you need.
And here is a tip for making all of this a little easier. It may help you to not feel overwhelmed by information if you simply write down one word clues from sites as you browse them.
- Puffy Sleeves
- Orange and yellow – Fall
- Rose Gold
- Copper
- Ruffles – summer
Just a word or two, pertaining to your niche or product, is all you really need to inspire you.
Now, what are you going to sell?
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