Markets of a pandemic

Week three of company self-isolation and still no end in sight to all this disruption. Trends have been showing how people are adapting their shopping habits to suit the new hibernation mindset and the popular products that have emerged. Some are obvious, some are weird, but it shows that there is still money out there to be made if you identify the markets.

What I learned

• No end in sight yet to our new world
• The trends they are a changin’
• Can you add sought after products to your inventory?
• There’s still money in the marketplace
• Hit me up for a free site review

Transcript

Hey, welcome back Rankers. How you going? Things are still changing. Things are still developing. A lot`s changed since last week. And look, it is going to continue to change. But what isn`t changing is me at home. This is my third week and StewArt Media`s third week in working from home. We don`t know how long it`s going to go on. No one knows how long this is going to go on for. So we`ve just got to do the best we can and take one day at a time basically.

I`ve been constantly looking at how the trends are changing and how people are shopping differently now. People are still buying things, people are still selling things. It`s just up to us to find out where they are, who they are, and what they`re buying and how you can adapt your existing catalogue and maybe hit up some existing suppliers for items or lines that you may not carry that maybe you want to now because it better suits your existing customer base living in a home environment predominantly now.

So a few examples of that. There`s an excellent post by Wayne Baskin today on LinkedIn. He`s posted up something there from Kirsty Ward of Booktopia talking about the sorts of books that people are buying. You can get a lot of insights from that. So you know the things that we already know, like fitness, health, those sorts of things. And we all know the story about the obvious things that are selling well at the moment are things like gym equipment, if you can get your hands on it. That`s obvious, because people can`t go to the gym anymore. So they want to stay fit, they`re going to do it at home.

But she`s also pointing out a few other interesting things that I hadn`t seen, like biography sales are up and autobiographies are up, which is interesting. Things like meditation, cooking, activities for kids, all of these things that we know. So the things that we`ve seen, the categories that we`ve seen go through the roof, we`ve all seen them on the news, like the gardens, like the hens, like these are all people preparing to live in a hibernated society.

I had some mates say, `Geez, you`re not going to grow a garden in a few weeks.` Well no, but a lot of these people are thinking, `Well, maybe it`s time to start growing my own veg longer term, and so I`ll do that.` So there`s a lot of these sorts of things that are changing the way that we do things.

The other things that we`ve seen go upwards are anything that`s to do with making the home more functional now. So that includes things like cooking equipment, a lot of hobbies. Hobbies are big obviously, because we can`t get out. We`re not doing things. So don`t fall into the trap of thinking that, `Well, nobody`s spending money.` They actually are. So that is actually happening.

Some interesting peripheral things that are happening as well outside of the hibernated society and this is to do with the pandemic crisis itself. We`re seeing areas lift in an activity which we hadn`t seen before. One of those is 3D printing. We`ll get back to this one in a moment. But 3D printing, as you can see, right now it`s going through the roof in the US. The reason for that is, as I said last week, there`s a lot of open-source medical supply groups building things like ventilators, face masks, valves, anything that can help with the medical supply crisis that various communities around the world are going through at the moment. I`ve got a couple of 3D printers over there in the shed, so I thought, `Well, I might as well have a go.` But the interest in that has just gone through the roof. It`s quite amazing.

Now this one just makes me laugh, how to cut your own hair. Okay, that`s funny. Look, I can give you some advice on that. I`ve been doing it since 1996, and it`s really not hard. I`ve got the skills, and I can help you. So not only with your digital marketing and your free reviews, there`s a few of us doing free reviews on LinkedIn now. Mike Angel`s doing them. I think Jason Greenwood`s doing them. E-commerce reviews, not SEO. Just trying to get your transactions up, there are some simple things that you can do. But there`s a bunch of us doing those sorts of things. I`ll do a free review, and I`ll teach you how to cut your own hair. It just involves a lot of shaving cream.

Hopefully, that`s helpful. Please share, like, and subscribe if you find it helpful and useful, and we`ll see you next week. Thanks very much, everyone. Stay safe. Bye.

Jim

Jim’s been here for a while, you know who he is.