There are products that can be simply described as evergreen, such as clothing and TVs for an example, but then there are also new or “new” products that suddenly become huge and offer good opportunities for smart and quick entrepreneurs. In this article we will look at 5 different types of products that we believe will see a massive surge in popularity in 2015.
1: Smart watches
Already in 2014 smart watches began gaining lot more popularity with companies such as Samsung rolling out their own watches, but we believe that 2015 will be the year of the smartwatch. Though, the more accurate way to put that might be to say that 2015 will be the year of Apple’s smartwatch. Apple Watch is coming out in 2015 and everything indicates that it will become a hit among the consumers, it will be interesting to see if the other smartwatch maker’s can capitalize on this increased interest in product that is at the moment maybe considered slightly geeky.
From the e-commerce point of view there are some challenges with selling smartwatches, at least if you are not a big player already. First of all the margins with electronics tend to be rather low, so to make lot of money you will either have to move lot of products or be able to sell add-ons with better margins to the consumers. The other big problem with selling products such as smart watches is that there are some really big e-commerce companies that enjoy lot of credibility in consumers’ eyes when it comes to electronics, so when a consumer is pondering between ordering from your store and ordering from a more established store such as BestBuy.com, you need to have something special about your store that convinces the consumer to choose it – and because of the mentioned low margins you can’t really do lot of competing on the price.
2: Virtual Reality headsets and games
In 2015 there are new virtual reality, or VR as it now often referred to as, products such as headsets coming out and the first reviews of these products have been very positive.
Due to the fact that virtual reality as a concept has been around for so long without really managing to deliver much, that at least the broader audience would have enjoyed there might be some initial skepticism from consumers regarding the VR products, but if these new products take off there might lot of business opportunities in selling them. Although, from the e-commerce POV retailers might face similar type of problems as with the above mentioned watches.
3: 3D-printer filaments
3D-printers are unlikely to become a standard household item in 2015, but they will unquestionable continue to increase in popularity as the quality of the printers goes up while the prices go down. So why are we recommending looking into selling filaments (what they usually use for printing instead of ink) for them instead of the actual printers? There are couple reasons for that.
First of all, shipping and selling filaments is easier as the products are smaller, lighter and cheaper. The second big reason is that we believe that with selling filaments there are opportunities for creating long term relationships with the consumers. Just like with the ink that the “old school” printers consume, with the filaments that the 3D-printers use, consumers will be replacing their “ammunition” many times more often than the actual printer. This leads to a great opportunity to get repeat customers with, hopefully, smaller marketing costs. Obviously though, the consumer has to enjoy the first buying experience to become a repeat customer..
4: Consumer drones
This one comes with a warning: the current legislation is in many places either unclear (with clarifications expected in 2015 and years following that) or quite restrictive when it comes to using drones. So if you decide to sell drones, it is likely a good idea to proceed with caution. However with that said, it is clear that the consumers are quickly becoming fond of using the small drones for an example for filming extreme sports, so there is certainly a market at the moment for selling them.
5: The dark horse
In the beginning of 2014 who would have thought (well actually, who had even heard of it back then..) that the selfie stick would become such as massive thing before the year would end. So the lesson here is to keep your eyes open, there is likely to be some product that comes from seemingly nowhere and is huge before 2015 ends, and if you manage to capitalize on that, well, the rewards should be plentiful..
Photo by Flickr user rawdonfox.
