Products to Sell: Finding Trends in Your Market

Brief:

• There are many ways that a retailer or supplier can look for trending products on the internet. Sometimes the scope is so broad that you get lost in the search process. This article outlines a few simple and straightforward steps that can get you started.
• You need to be smart when you look for trending products to sell. While there are many organic ways to research and learn about trends, those are often more time consuming and require lots of self-filtering and analysis. There are existing tools that streamline your search process and help you find what you need quickly. Combine a few different methods to maximize the accuracy and efficiency of your research.
• The key to keeping up with the latest product trend in the market is to be proactive rather than reactive. Conducting predictive trend research makes you prepared for upcoming trends and allows you to get ahead of your competitors

Whether you are an individual owner of an online store, a category manager, product sourcing lead for a retail business, a marketing professional, or a supplier looking to capitalize on the market trend and sell some popular products, this article will provide you various methods and tools to help you conduct trending product research in the most effective and concise manner.

Study the Larger Market Landscape

To start, looking for trending products to sell is not a self-contained process. In fact, it is not very useful to just search trending products on Google by itself and pick the top 20 as your upcoming products to source or manufacture. Try to work backward and place those trends in a bigger context, such as political, economic, and worldwide trends.

A good example would be the change in consumer behaviors and retail landscape due to Covid-19 that spurred a series of new product trends. Think about remote working, travel restrictions, and online learning, how each of these phenomena led to some sort of new trending products. 2020 saw a drastic boost to the home improvement, tech, sporting goods, and general merchandise product categories as people spent less on travel and more on their immediate needs and new lifestyle.

Look at new stories that impact society in physical or psychological ways that may potentially shift customers’ behavior. For example, the rise of sustainable products is essentially a result of increased awareness of environmental degradation and pollution across the globe.

Cross-reference things you have discovered from social media or Google trends with recent stories and see if they hint toward a rise of a product. The most important thing to note is you need to be proactive rather than reactive, and look for trends before they are even one.

Methods of Looking for Trending Products to Sell

There are many different ways to start researching the latest product trends in the market, some are more straightforward while others take more time and effort to find. In the sections below, the methods are divided into short, long, direct, and indirect categories. It is most effective when you combine methods so you can cross-reference different sets of data to get a more accurate picture.

Short Way:

Organic Search on Google

The easiest and fastest way to find trending products in the market is to search on Google. Chances are you will find articles from multiple website and blog sources regarding new product trends. However, a majority of these articles just list the top 20 or 30 products you should sell and don’t provide many details beyond a short explanation on its trend or growth in the past few months. These types of articles are hyper-focused and not particularly useful if you are looking for a larger category trend rather than one or two individual products to sell. It is more useful to quickly browse through them if you already have an idea of what category trends are hot at the moment and match specific products that fit with that category.

Product Trend Research Tool

To save time, there are product trend research tools that have already compiled information for you so you can easily look up trends based on growth, categories, and competition with a simple interface and a few clicks of a button. The downside is these tools usually limit your usage in the free version, and you have to pay a subscription fee to unlock the rest of the services. If you are looking to save time and are willing to spend money, then this is a good option. It is important to note, though, that while these tools are good for providing an overview of trending products, they don’t cover the entire scope. As a result, you still need to do some other side searches to validate the results.

Long Way:

Besides direct search and paid tools, things like social media and retailer sites themselves offer many insights into the current trends for consumers. These methods are more roundabout and take time to filter and organize information to be useful.

Look at Online Marketplaces

Online marketplaces offer their own data and statistics about trending products on their platform. Looking for this information is as straightforward as clicking “popular,” “top seller this week,” and “trending right now” types of curated collections to find what the consumers are loving at the moment. A few of the sites you should definitely check include Amazon, eBay, and Aliexpress. Amazon has a section called Amazon Movers and Shakers which shows a list of products that experience the biggest gain in sales in the past 24 hours. Check out the Best Sellers Section to find trending products for a certain niche. If you already know what categories are selling well, you can narrow your searches and save a lot of time. eBay and AliExpress work similarly as you can review the popular section to look for trending items.

The advantages of performing trend research via the marketplace are the authenticity and availability they offer. The downside is that what you see trending on the site is most likely out of trend by the time you see it. It doesn’t have a predictive trend search and you have to create your own analysis and speculation based on what you see on the site. You also need to go to each site individually and compile the information together, which makes the research more time-consuming.

Use the Supplier Directory

This may be one of the most straightforward ways to find out about the latest product trend in the market. Take advantage of other suppliers’ knowledge and insight in the sourcing industry and look at what they are stocking. Those are most likely the trendy items at the moment. Sites like Alibaba and Global Sources have a supplier directory that you can review easily.

TradeBeyond is a simple sourcing app with hundreds of retailers and suppliers working together to streamline product assortment and development. You can browse the marketplace to see what’s trending or most sought after by retailers. It is free and easy to sign up and the app works on your PC, tablet, or phone, making it easy to do research wherever you are. Download from our website and try it out now or contact us to learn more!

Use Google Trends

Last but not least, use Google Trends to check if the search volume matches what you have found through other methods. You can also use this product support tool, in general, to evaluate and analyze products’ trends over time.

Social Media Platforms

Social media platforms are a good place to scout upcoming trends as well as trends that are already on the rise. Sites like Reddit and Twitter often have conversations and buzz about exciting new products, while Instagram and Pinterest are good for looking at creative and innovative products using tags and keywords. Pay close attention to key influencers’ activities. Sometimes product trends are spurred on or inspired by particular things done by a certain famous person; stay in the loop to catch it firsthand! Similarly look at YouTube to find interesting content that may go viral and inspire new trends.

Summary

We discussed a few methods you can use to find trending products to sell. There are some organic ways to do it, as well as shortcuts and tools you can leverage to save yourself time. At the end of the day, the best way to conduct this type of research is by cross-referencing information from multiple sources to increase accuracy and efficiency. And rather than chasing after current trends, try to be proactive with predictive research so you can stay ahead and be the innovators who initiate the trends rather than follow them.