Join us!
Partners
Trendwatching and You: Valuable Trend Tips for Internet Entrepreneurs
Reinier Evers is the founder of Trendwatching.com, a trend firm which publishes monthly, free trend briefings on the future of business. A sister site called Springwise profiles companies implementing innovations stemming from trends. TheNextWomen talked to Reinier about trends and the Internet entrepreneur.
How should Internet startups make use of trends?
One mistake companies make is to think that all trends apply to all consumers. You need to know your market to determine whether a particular trend is relevant.
Internet startups should realise that their market is often not made up of tech-savvy people like themselves. The Internet is really just another means of distributing your product.
An example where an Internet Entrepreneur may be ahead of its own target market is the customized travel guide site (Offbeat Guides) launched by Technorati founder Dave Sifry. It’s a great idea but the site looks like a tech blog when it should be a glossy travel magazine.
What about the new Status Symbols: ‘Creation’ and ‘Doing’ vs ‘Consuming’ and ‘Owning’?
What people consume is still what drives them the most, but we see a new type of status which is based on peoples’ online lives. In this world, status is determined by how many people follow you on Twitter, view your pictures on Flickr, etc.
Generation C is the content generation. Every person has a creative urge but this urge is not encouraged in a consumer society. New technology allowed people to unlock that creativity and I think this creative segment will increase. There is an online collaborative lifestyle now which -by default- is about sharing.
Another new status symbol is the unique experience, ‘doing’ rather than ‘owning’, especially in richer societies where many people can afford to buy the same things. A trend we see in this respect is status stories which are the stories you can tell people about an experience.We recently did a case study with a hotel in Hong Kong which has an amazing penthouse suite.
We asked people if they would want to stay in the suite for free on condition that they could never tell anyone about it. For most people, this decreases the value of the experience to almost nothing.
Brands think that they have to tell consumers a story whereas in fact they just need to give people the ingredients to tell their own stories.
How do trends vary between regions? Can European, US and Asian Startups learn from each other?
Consumerism is global. Culture is very local.
US culture is still much more obsessed with consumerism and material success than Europe. European startups need to realise that they are competing with US entrepreneurs, people who are 10 times more focused on that kind of success than they are.
However, the US is not the best at everything. US Entrepreneurs should look at what Europe does really well, for example design, and try to import it into the US.
Similarly, Asia has great strengths in areas like attention to detail, discipline and a collaborative way of working. The US should be not be viewed as the standard to be reached but rather as just as another market. The standard is set in different places worldwide for different disciplines.
Michelle Dewberry Launches Chiconomise
flickr: Michelle Dewberry
Founded by former Apprentice winner, Michelle Dewberry, Chiconomise has launched its site after six months as a weekly newsletter. Timed perfectly (for the consumer) with the recession, the site helps ladies economise their chic ways, and has amassed an ever increasing following of chiconomistas. Drawn to the site with the promise of finding ‘the stuff you love for less’, it acts as a platform for discounts from across the world of fashion, beauty, living, travel, lifestyle and food.
The site is a virtual treasure trove of ever changing discounts, from exclusive deals on jewellery and shoes, to 20% off Atelier Annick handbags, not to mention bargain furniture and discount flights. As well as endless deals, the site caters to every need of the fashion conscious – from news and trends to Splurge Vs Steal, where catwalk glamour can be found at high street prices – and has a great diary highlighting designer and sample sales.
Of course no site is complete without a blog these days, and theirs is cleverly written by shopping addicted, salary cut Ellie Bly – an account manager at a media company who lives in Shoreditch with her piles of unopened bank statements, a sizable debt from university, cancelled credit and a passion for shopping.
It’s difficult to pick holes at the site, after all, who doesn’t want to know where they can get a pair of discount Jimmy Choos?
Trendwatchers of the Year reveal Trends to Watch in the Online World in 2009
Many successful companies have been founded on the back of a new social trend so trend-watching should be part of any aspiring entrepreneur’s remit. The Trendwatcher of the Year award (TWOTY09) in Amsterdam, organized by Andrea Wiegman of Second Sights, gave an insight into what trendwatchers think will be the next big thing. Kees Elands and Renee Maas of TrendsActive outlined some of their predictions for future developments in the online world.
- Social Networking: They expect social networking to collapse into many niche social networking groups, possibly based around particular interests, and closed networks (See SoundCloud for an example of a closed network industry-specific social network).
- Less is more: Many people are currently using online tools like Twitter simply because the tools are there. In the future they will become more selective in how they spend time on various services and will expect them to serve a clearly useful purpose. Stricter criteria will lead to a higher demand for filters of information, word-of-mouth being the filter currently in vogue for Internet-based businesses.
- Internet generations: Baby boomers will start spending much more time online but most social networking sites are not set up with them in mind. So there could be some serious money to be made in services which cater to them.
The upcoming talent award winner Anna Sulimma’s top trend is the changing role of men and women in the workplace and the home. She thinks that people want to have a home again, not just a career. This will lead to men (and women) working less and spending more time on childcare. In Germany 3.8 million men are expected to be involved in childcare by 2020. In general there will be more emphasis on working flexibly in order to have a life as well as a job.
Irene Koel of Bloei, which won the trend implementation agency of the year, make extensive drawings and illustrations of trends. Being an entrepreneur herself (Bloei creates its own products as well as developing concepts for other companies) and works with many startups. She finds startups great fun to work with but they often have trouble seeing beyond the minutiae of the product and are not used to thinking big. Her own team is a mix of creatives and operational staff since you need both in order to get things done. The same is probably true of successful startup teams.
Her advice to any new entrepreneur is to initially work from home, possibly hanging on to a day job of some kind, and spend very little money until you are sure that your concept will work. She recalls how, for the first nine months of her company’s existence, they had meetings in hotel lobbies in order to avoid inviting clients to Bloei’s (then non-existent) office.
A Hollywood Movie and the Global Recession Increases Home Swaps
The Holiday - Catalyst for a Rise in Home Swappers
The recession is proving a profitable time for businesses that have harnessed Web 2.0 to bring people luxuries at an affordable price. For similar reasons that have seen users flock to LoveFilm so too have membership numbers increased on home exchange sites, but whilst LoveFilm provide cheap rental, home exchange sites provide accommodation abroad for almost no cost at all.
The UK HomeExchange website was launched last year by Julie Osborne after the company enjoyed great success Stateside. An article in the BMI inflight magazine recently reported that: although the global recession has definitely had an impact on subscribers, their first injection of additional numbers came after the 2006 release of the film, The Holiday, when users over a two year period increased by almost 80% from 10,000 to 18,000.
Home Exchange sites work by providing one site for all accommodation to be viewed. In return for a yearly fee users list their property’s and search for others they would like to exchange with. Packages of varying price allow for properties to be grouped essentially by value. HomeExchange’s Gold package for example includes Mansions, Chateaux and Castles, although there is a price to pay with a yearly membership fee in excess of £300.
HomeLink, now run by Caroline Connolly was founded in the 1950s, and backs the evidence that these sites are gaining more momentum in direct correlation with the recession. It is interesting to note from the article in the BMI inflight magazine that whilst their total numbers are not as impressive as those of HomeExchange, they have still reported a jump in users since the economy came under pressure.
If you have a home worth swapping, a dwindling bank balance and would like free accommodation why not check out one of these sites.
Report: importance of (informal) venture capital for businesses
During the recent years two remarkable trends have occurred in the economic sector: a striking growth of small entrepreneurs worldwide and an upcoming number of women participating as employees in the labor market. Indeed, an increasing number of women have started their own business. Thus, women’s share of business ownership is growing and research is done how these business are funded.
Marieke de Kort, founder of the Dutch on-line community for businesswomen O+ zakenvrouw van nu, has investigated the issue of gender, entrepreneurship and venture capital and has agreed to share some of her findings with The NextWomen. Part I is about the importance of venture capital for businesses and Part II why women are getting less of it.
What is venture capital?
Venture capital is finance provided to companies, mostly in exchange for an equity stake of the company or product. These financial resources are vital for an enterprise, since it enables the company to move into the second stage. It may be used for instance as an investment for product innovation or research and development. Venture capital is provided to companies by either specialist financial institutions or by informal venture capitalists.
Financial institutions such as banks offer loans to entrepreneurs. These financial institutions demand the payment of interest on the invested capital. Informal venture capitalists (or informals) on the other hand are mostly wealthy individual investors who are willing to invest in start-ups, early stage businesses or expanding enterprises, in exchange for stocks and bonds of the company.
Why are informal venture capitalists important for a business?
An informal venture capitalist can have two functions for a company: Firstly the informal provides the actual capital injection and secondly, he can offer either his advice or his network. Although this may seem trivial at first sight, such expertise and network connections may be even more important than the actual loan. For some entrepreneurs, it is one of the main reasons to solicit for an investment from an informal investor.
Are there differences between financial institutions and informal investors?
There are several differences between financial institutions and informal investors. Read more
The 10 home business trends of 2009
home business are the future
More and more people will be starting and growing their business from home in 2009, Enterprise Nation, the online resource for home businesses in the UK predicts.
But there is more, at an event last week, Enterprise nation has highlighted the ten home business trends of 2009 with predictions showing the significant impact home enterprise will have on the economy, environment and society.
In 2009, Enterprise Nation predicts
1. More home businesses- Read more
Women are in the majority on Facebook and numbers are growing
New data reported by Inside Facebook this week shows that women age 55 and over are percentage wise the fastest-growing U.S. demographic group on Facebook in the last three months. In the US that makes a group of women age 55 and over of about 700 thousand in total.
Women now make up 56.2% of users and the numbers are growing faster than men across all age groups.
The fastest growing age group by total users is 26-34. However, the Facebook audience overall is getting older as its audience grows well beyond the original college students it started with.
The 10 ‘Women Online’ Trends 2009
CEO, Wendy Piersall of Sparkplugging, a US blog network dedicated to work at home resources, has written an interesting piece about the online trends in 2009 for women targeted businesses. Published at Escalate Media, a large network of online communities for women, to which she is an adviser, these are the major trends:
- Women’s Ad Networks Glam media, Blogher, MomLogic, Martha’s circle are a couple of the women’s ad networks. Consolidation may be upcoming. The online advertising industry is best positioned to weather the economic storm, albeit with only moderate growth. For publishers, it’s therefore getting harder to get in the networks.
- Women’s Social Networks. Piersall sees an epidemic of social networks to women, and in particular, moms. She points out that winners will be social networks and online communities for the top three activities women engage in online: shopping, reading the news, and socializing.
- Number of Women online. Numbers will go up, as out-of-home entertainment with the recession will become more popular.
- Social Media Marketing. Since social communities are here to stay, and women are extremely active in these communities, companies and brands are getting to the point where they can’t ignore social media marketing any more. Read more
Travelling Mamas 2009
Traveling Mamas (Beth- third from the left)
There is life after Motherhood, says travel writer Beth Blair. And it is worth writing about. Hence the blog Travelling Mamas. “We realized that by using our sister-like chemistry combined with our experiences, we could start a blog to inspire moms to travel and remind them that life doesn’t end with motherhood .” As the site exists a year this month, we asked Beth to tell us what the mamas have done this year, what 2009 holds in store for the site and the travel industry as a whole.
What has this year been like for you? Read more
Recession mirrored in fashion: time for vintage
style.com speaks of depression chic
The FT today reports that the current economic climate has brought back the vintage look.
The Paper reports that as winter is carrying on, the “new nostalgia” look has evidently struck on the catwalk, where designers seek to evoke the certainties of the past amid shifting economic times. Designers aim to design clothes that do not break budgets and are multipurpose, like classic dresses and suits. Fashion buyers say customers will be taken back to the fashion that prevailed in the depression era of the 1930s and 1940s.
In the US the economic climate reportedly already showed earlier last year, when US catwalks featured fashion reminiscent of the depression era. Read more
- br/>
Extras
-
