Creating a hot-selling product: creating a trend or chasing a trend

For companies that sell products, a hit product means a surge in sales and revenue, which is what most companies are pursuing. So, if you want to create a hit product, should you chase the trend or create the trend? The author of this article analyzes the advantages and disadvantages of each, let's take a look.

When talking about hot products, all companies that sell products will be overjoyed. What? Our product has become a hot product? Great, the year-end bonus will be doubled. Hot products mean a surge in sales and a surge in revenue .

During the Chinese New Year, I went to Shantou for a trip and saw a small milk tea shop that was less than five square meters. There were so many people stopping to take pictures. Although it is small in size, its efficiency per square meter may be higher than that of Haidilao, because it is located in a prime location near a tourist attraction, with a huge flow of people. In addition, it is also an online celebrity store, so the small shop is simply a money-printing machine. This is the advantage of a hit product, no worries about customers, no worries about sales, and no worries about development .

In the past, I thought that in order to create a hit product, you had to create momentum yourself, by spending money to hire people to promote your product, placing soft articles, placing advertisements in print media, etc., to hype up the momentum of your product and thus create a hit product.

Later, when I started working in e-commerce, I would encounter hot spots every day, every quarter, and every year. I began to think that instead of creating hot spots myself, it would be better to chase the hot spots and make hot products. This operation is simpler and also brings great returns.

01 The advantages of creating and chasing trends

First of all, we must understand that when we take advantage of the trend, there are only two situations: either we create the trend ourselves or we chase the trend. Both methods have their own advantages.

Creating a trend is a winner-takes-all game. For example, if you have created a trend for the sugar-free concept and your product is the leader in the sugar-free field, all sugar-free users will buy your product. Of course, there will be followers, but the market share of these followers will not even be a fraction of yours.

I remember that a long time ago there was a sugar-free tea drink that was not very popular and was about to be laid off. But then the sugar-free trend came and it suddenly made a comeback and started making money without any effort .

The advantage of chasing the trend is that it is easier to turn around if the boat is small. Taking e-commerce as an example, there are trends every day. Some time ago, there were disinfectant guns, test strips, fairy wands, water guns in summer, sunscreen, hand cream in winter, etc. Trends come one after another. Don’t say you catch every one of them. If you catch one, it will be enough to support you for a year.

For example, mugwort, the cost is only a few cents, and no one buys it for a few dollars before the trend comes. But when the trend comes, orders of dozens of dollars are not enough to grab them. When the trend really comes, you won’t be able to ship all the goods.

A trend is like starting a company. Creating a trend is like being the boss, and chasing the trend is like hanging out with the boss. If the company is successful, the boss gets the most, and those who hang out with the boss get the least.

If the company fails, the boss loses everything, but those who work with the boss can still find a new boss to work with. This is the advantage of both, one has high risk but high return, the other has low risk but low return .

02 Disadvantages of creating trends and chasing trends

As mentioned above, the investment in creating a hot spot is really huge and it is not suitable for small companies. Another point is that if a small company is lucky enough to create a hot spot, it is very likely to be a wedding dress for a large company.

There is a story about a small vendor selling fish balls who had been setting up his stall for several years but did not make much money. Later, the road at the intersection where he set up his stall was repaired, making it wider and cleaner. More vehicles passed by, and more people stopped to eat the vendor's fish balls.

Gradually, people discovered that there was a demand for fish balls here, so four or five fish ball shops opened at once. The small vendors had small tents outdoors, while others had fully furnished houses. As a result, all the business was snatched away by latecomers. Although the demand had come, the small vendors earned less than before .

Creating a trend requires a lot of investment and the success rate is also low. Let’s not talk about how much money is needed to create a trend. It is still a question whether humans, such a magical animal, have the ability to create a trend.

Creating a hotspot requires a person to have a strong understanding of the operation of society. In addition to experience, this requires more talent. Without keen insight, no matter how much training you receive, you will not be able to control the game. Talent and capital are the necessary conditions for creating a hotspot. Many companies do not have these two conditions, but they want to create a hotspot. The outcome is doomed from the beginning.

The disadvantage of chasing the trend is that it also requires experience, but the threshold for experience is much lower than that of creating the trend. If you stay in an industry for a year, you will know when there is a trend. What if there is no trend in this industry? Then there is nothing you can do, and you may spend your life like this.

Chasing the wind means following the wind. I used to like to chase the big wind, but later I found that when we thought we had caught the wind, it was actually the bankers of other people’s wind who were preparing to reap the profits. That was not the wind at all, but a sickle.

However, when encountering a real small opportunity, its biggest disadvantage is that it is unpredictable. Without good foresight, you can only rely on luck .

Are firecrackers very popular this year? I have seen a similar case. A firecracker factory has been open for several years. It has been losing money in the first three years. It feels that this business is not going to work, so it closed the factory a few months ago and cancelled its business license and other qualifications. As a result, everyone has seen the market situation. This person regrets it very much.

Even people in the industry can't guess this kind of small trend, let alone outsiders? My understanding of chasing the trend is that luck and vision each account for half.

03 Create a trend or chase the trend?

It's time to do multiple-choice questions again. Multiple-choice questions in life are not like math problems, which have standard answers. Choices in life are based on your own conditions. For example, after graduating from university, should you go to Shanghai or Beijing? It is not decided by you, but by your relatives or classmates in Shanghai or Beijing.

You will generally go to where you know people. The conditions you choose are based on your own background. Similarly, whether you choose to create a trend or chase a trend also depends on your personal resources and conditions.

If you are a small company, it is not appropriate to choose to create a trend. The advertising budget for creating a trend is in the billions. You can't get it, so don't dream about it. And what about chasing the trend? E -commerce is more about testing the ability of the supply chain. Although there are many small trends, it may not be so easy to catch them .

Take the firecrackers mentioned above as an example. The qualification alone stumps many people. Some people around me also wanted to sell them in WeChat Moments during the Chinese New Year, but gave up when they saw the penalty regulations. The threshold is too high. It is normal that you can see it but not catch it.

Creating a trend or chasing a trend seems to be difficult, so how should we choose? In fact, it is a good thing to be difficult. If the threshold is very low, everyone will make money, and then everyone will make much less.

If there is a threshold, all we need to do is to find ways to improve our ability to cross the threshold. When you have the ability to create or chase the trend, you can choose according to your personal ability.

04 Last

There are opportunities every day, it depends on whether you can catch them. I can probably foresee the regular small opportunities this year, and the next step is to improve my ability to catch opportunities. I hope I can catch one or two small opportunities this year. But even if I can't catch them this year, there will be opportunities next year. Don't worry, as long as I can catch them once, it will be enough.

Author: Tiger Talks Operations

Source: WeChat public account "Laohu Jiangyy (ID: laohujiangyy)"