A smart growth strategy is to ignore fleeting micro-trends and instead focus on proven bestsellers. By creating variations and expanding on successful designs, brands can develop entirely new product categories based on existing customer love.
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Don't try to force customers to adopt new behaviors, like a boot-buyer purchasing sandals. Instead, focus on encouraging them to buy a second pair, a newer model, or an upgraded version of the product they already love. This audience-focused approach builds on existing loyalty and is far more effective.
Predicting the future is hard. Instead, focus on foundational truths that will remain constant. Bezos knew customers would always want lower prices and faster delivery. Building a business around these unchanging principles is a more robust strategy than chasing fleeting trends.
According to Shopify's President, the key to building the next wave of billion-dollar brands isn't capturing a slice of an existing market, but creating a new one entirely. Brands like Skims and Gymshark succeeded by redefining their categories (shapewear, athletic apparel), effectively creating new TAM rather than just competing for it.
Instead of focusing budgets on acquiring new customers, businesses should invert their spending to serve existing ones. A powerful growth strategy is to identify the needs of your best customers and create new services or premium options specifically for them, maximizing lifetime value from those who already trust you.
To grow an established product, introduce new formats (e.g., Instagram Stories, Google AI Mode) as separate but integrated experiences. This allows you to tap into new user behaviors without disrupting the expectations and mental models users have for the core product, avoiding confusion and accelerating adoption.
Province of Canada intentionally built an 'anti-fashion' brand by focusing on timeless basics rather than seasonal collections. This simplifies inventory, creates dependable products for customers, and allowed them to avoid the high-pressure, discount-driven wholesale cycle, leading to a more stable business.
Instead of inventing a completely new market, position your product as a sub-category of something people already understand (e.g., "like live chat, but for sales"). This "horseless carriage" approach makes innovation digestible by grounding it in a familiar concept, as Drift did.
Many marketers mistakenly start with the goal of creating a new category. However, a new category only emerges as a downstream consequence of a strong, existing demand that is poorly served by all current products. The demand must exist before a new category can be successfully established.
Uniqlo's global success isn't from following fast fashion trends, but by rejecting them. The company focuses on high-quality, long-lasting basics and innovative functional fabrics like Heattech, creating a universally appealing brand that prioritizes durability and value over fleeting styles.
To create a successful new product, find the balance between what consumers already know and what is new. If a product is too familiar, it lacks differentiation. If it's too novel, it becomes foreign and difficult for consumers to adopt, creating a high barrier to entry.
