Let us consider the major trend spotting company formats in greater detail:
Individual Consultants
Individual consultants make up a significant proportion of the trend spotting industry and can be found in locations around the world. Most consultants have had previous experiences as trend experts (either as part of a trend forecasting agency or within large organizations), market researchers, or entrepreneurs in innovative or trend-related (e.g. fashion) industries. Others utilize rich, interdisciplinary backgrounds to augment their skills.
Globetrorring independent Trend Strategist Jody Turner, for example, graduated with degrees in Design, Curation, and Archaeology, and had jobs involving surveying for the Forest Service, working in galleries, working on digs, offering creative services to advertising agencies, and assisting clients as a graphic design. Turner says that all of her previous experiences “contributed to the skills needed as a trend strategist – (1) To cull and curate WHAT MATTERS most to individual and society that is future leaning and influencing, (2) To understand and place within a current to future social-anthropological-archaeological CONTEXT and to (3) Communicate clearly needed action and OPPORTUNITY SPACE within our visually driven culture.”
Individual consultants have the benefit of low overhead and a flexible schedules. Frequently engaged in business travel (which allows these trend spotters to not only meet with clients but also conduct additional scanning and research), consultants can provide consulting services, training, and keynotes. Often, individual consultants are published authors, and their trend-related publications act as a steady, alternate source of income to make up for the volatility of freelance work.
Trend Consultancies
Trend consultancies consist of a smaller but nonetheless significant and growing cluster within the trend spotting industry. Trend consultancies are often founded by one or more individuals who may have initially worked as freelance trend consultants. The newer versions of these agencies are relatively small in size and have a start-up feel, while the more established consultancies are more likely to have multiple offices and a more formalized, hierarchical management structure. With one or more office located in strategic clusters, these businesses have more overhead than freelance consultants, but still maintain relatively lean operations, with minimal employees and office space.
To compensate for their typically low volume of employees, most trend consultancies develop and tap into a group of trend scouts (e.g. PSFK’s ‘Purple List’ and TechCast’s ‘Experts’). In fact, these networks of trend scouts (also referred to as experts, coolhunters, trend spotters, etc…) often become trend consultancies’ most valued resources, as they provide a form of swarm intelligence that gives the company leverage over individuals and other agencies with weaker networks. The importance of maintaining these networks, therefore, is a vital function of all trend consultancies that maintain them.
Because they are more fleshed out than their one-person counterparts, trend consultancies are able to offer a more formalized and varied mix of products and services. With the support of more employees, as well as the occasional network of trend scouts, trend consultancies are able to offer more detailed and frequently published trend reports. Trend consultancies are also able to host clients in-house, perform more elaborate training sessions, conduct more formalized research (and through sheer volume, take in more information), as well as leverage all employees’ skills to offer a greater breadth of specialized ideation, design, and consulting services.
Trend spotting consultancies might also leverage their collective intelligence to regularly post free online content (either in video, audio, pictorial, or written format- or a combination of some or all of these elements) as well as to publish books, which may either be dolled up trend reports or else general guides to new developments or the trend spotting process itself.
In-house Trend Experts / Departments
The trend spotting industry also has a strategic group of trend spotters who operate inside the companies they serve. For the most part, only large companies, such as Target, are known for employing in-house trend spotters (such as now-independent Robyn Waters, who used to be Target’s Vice President of Trend Design and Product Development), however smaller companies have also started to consider the benefits of internally initiated trend research and have started to hire experts or train existing employees in the practice.
At times, internal trend research exists only in the form of one expert; at other times it may be manifested in an entire trend-oriented department. For budgetary reasons, individuals are the most common manifestations, and when there are designated trend departments, these departments are also often focused on other functions, such as marketing, research, and/or strategy.
