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Barbers are Back in Business!

Barbers are back in business, and they are getting bigger like never before.

Google search interest for “barber near me” is prevailing (1). And, last year, the r/Barber subreddit subscribers mushroomed over 580%. On Instagram, #barbershop and #barber boasts over 30 million posts (2, 3).

However, the trend should not come as a surprise if we consider the boom of the male grooming industry.

And the trend brings a cohort of new opportunities apart from starting our own barbershop. You can apply this trend to a subscription business model or business in a box model by offering your products to customers or shipping prefab barbershops to new business owners worldwide. 

Or, you can also venture into the 80 billion USD industry (4) with technological innovation. For instance, Ring My Barber, a booking and payment for independent barbers based in the UK, has over 10k downloads on Android alone (5). 

Parasite Cleaners are Getting Popular

According to Jungle Scout, Amazon searches for “parasite cleanse” went an all-time high of 26 searches a week last month. People are looking for various OTC natural ingredients to clear out parasites.

Supplements like ParaProtex Intestinal Parasite Cleanse Tablets (6), containing wormseed powder, Rangoon creeper fruit, clove oil, barberry extract, and grapefruit seed extract, make more than 25k USD a month, as per Jungle Scout. 

Other similar ingredients like below make even more:

• Organic neem oil, over 50k USD a month
• Grapefruit seed extract liquid concentrate, about 66k USD a month
• Artichoke extract capsules, 68k USD a month
• Propolis extract, 250k USD a month
• Silymarin milk thistle powder, 270k USD a month

Other personalized supplements such as Care/of (7) and subscription supplements like Ritual (8) are also rapidly gaining popularity.

Birdwatching is a Billion-Dollar Industry

Earlier this year, more people joined the UK’s annual Big Garden birdwatch event for bird sightings like never before (9). 

Not only was 2021 a record-breaking year with more than 1 million participants, but reports suggest that the increase was highest among 18 to 29-year-olds. Participants from ages 18 to 29 had tripled and more than doubled among individuals ages 30 to 34 (10). 

There has also been about a 650% rise in subscribers to r/Ornithology, a subreddit for the scientific study of wild birds, from about 20k in August last year to over 129k this week (11). 

Birdwatching is a big business. As per a KHMER Times report published earlier this year (12), Costa Rican Tourism Institute alone makes over a billion USD in revenue from birdwatching. As per New York Times (13, 14), bird watchers spend more than 25 billion USD a year on bird feed, travel forays, binoculars, and live bird watching on the internet. 

According to the US Forest Service, birdwatching is among the most gradually increasing activity in the US (15). And India boasts the top ten position of being a wealthy bird nation with more than 1300 species (16). It offers tremendous opportunities for games, trips, gear, experiences, apps, secondhand marketplaces, communities, books, and merch for young birders who have only now started taking an interest. 

Farmville is Getting Real!

During the pandemic, the demand for organic food went up and is continuously growing ever since. 

As per a report, the Indian organic food market will grow at 20.5% CAGR to reach over 2600 million USD in valuation by 2026 from 850 million USD in 2020 (17). 

And we can see multiple opportunities rising with this trend. For instance, Farmizen, an Indian app-based startup, allows people to rent out 600 sq ft of land on a real farm near them for about a monthly fee of 2,500 INR (about 35 USD) via an app. 

Users can control their farm via the app while the farmer takes care of all the crops the customer chooses – similar to the online farming game Farmville. People can choose to visit the farm, harvest their organic products. The company even offers to deliver the produce home.

If you are looking to gain farming experience, Farmizen also has a workshare program, where you can participate in the whole farming process, from planting to harvesting. In addition, they will also give you one week’s free subscription for any eight hours of work you will do at the farm a week. 

There are plenty of more opportunities with this trend, including organic produce subscription boxes, communities, experiences, farm tours, blogging, terrace farming, certified classes, organic produce, and food on wheels, pet food, baby food, juice stall, food canning, medicinal herbs, mushroom farming, natural oils, health supplements, and the list is endless, as we mentioned in our previous story about eco-friendly products.

Unboxing Bank Account is a Thing Now

You may have come across people unboxing their phones, cars, gaming consoles, and other gadgets. And this startup called Fi is encouraging people to now unboxing their bank accounts as well. 

Fi is a neobank that aims to help millennials and Gen Z manage their finances. Making an account is easy, quick, and fully digital. You can make it within 5 minutes, and once you open an account, the company sends you an onboarding kit, and it is probably a bank kit you have never seen before. 

Unlike our traditional banks, Fi’s onboarding kit comes into a sleek black box; you see why people are posting unboxing videos! It contains a comic-style booklet, cool stickers, and a minimalistic debit card.

Banking is now Fun, @Bank_on_Fi deserves a Hi-Fi 🙌 for this amazing Account Onboarding Kit.

UI / UX is clearly at core for this team to give awesome modern customer centric experience. Kudos to your team & whoever came up with idea for comic with stickers. #FutureIsNeoBanks #Fi pic.twitter.com/SnifdVPJOO

— Vivek Yadav (@VivekYadavIN) May 31, 2021

Fi has changed the way we open bank accounts, long gone now the old-school process of filing paperwork, waiting for hours for things to be processed. Everything is so simple, quick, and entertaining!

It does one thing that all businesses have started focusing on well – targeting young audiences. And not only bank accounts, but you can apply the same formula to other areas and make some traditionally mundane things such as insurance, hiring letters, learning courses, shaving kits – and the list goes on, exciting. Why should only tech gadgets have all the fun?

Everything is Getting Silkier

Silk pillowcases have been killing everywhere for a while now. 

According to Jungle Scout, they bring in as much as 1 million USD a month in revenue. 

Since silk is a natural antimicrobial and hypoallergenic, it is popular for its potential skincare benefits. It doesn’t absorb (expensive) skincare products and keep your skin moisture intact during sleep. 

As per Jungle Scout, Amazon’s search interest in silk-related terms is climbing. It includes products like silk pillowcases for skin and hair, eye masks, sleep skin, anti-aging pillows, etc. 

Apart from sleep accessories such as eye masks and pillowcases, you can also explore other skincare products like exfoliating loofah and gloves. Another option includes hair accessories like headbands, headwraps, scrunchies, and hair scarves. 

Chakra Stones are Rocking!

Beautiful crystals, also called chakra stones or healing stones, are getting everywhere. And people are spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on crystals. According to a Bloomberg report, they had even managed to outshine forever popular diamonds during the pandemic (19). 

While we will debate whether these crystals are medically effective or not to the scientific community, they do offer excellent opportunities for people looking to capitalize on the trend. You can directly sell those crystals or offer gemstone jewelry and accessories. 

There are also opportunities to perform healing rituals, communities, DIY tutorials, newsletters related to stones, like different crystal types and their effects, artworks, lamps, home decor, and even apparel. 

Nostalgia is Still a Megatrend

Since the pandemic’s beginning, nostalgia is everywhere, and the trend has no sign of slowing down. And it does make sense as it is good to pine for the past and relive happy memories when we are stuck at home amid the pandemic. 

It also is good for marketers looking to capitalize on the trend. As per GlobalWebIndex, nostalgia can make people more optimistic and positively impact their actions (20). 

You can make most of the nostalgia trend by finding out the special moments in time that your customers crave and make out how you can translate them to your brand. Think about which wear, types of products, occasions, people, and places remind them of the happy past. 

At the same, remember, nostalgia is a limited edition or a short-term strategy, so avoid the temptation of making it a long-term tactic.

Rucha Joshi, currently managing a team of over 20 content writers at TimesNext is fueled by her passion for creative writing. She is eager to turn information into action. With her hunger for knowledge, she considers herself a forever student and a passionate leader.