How To Identifying Trending Collectible and Products

If you own or manage a retail store that specializes in collectible products, you should constantly be monitoring and analyzing trends. Using this information, you can make smarter decisions on which products to push and which ones to avoid. The fact is that most collectible products trend either upwards or downwards, and it's up to you to identify their pattern. Here, we're going to reveal some simple techniques for retail store owners to identify trending collectibles and other products.

Know Your Industry

The single most important piece of advice I can offer retail store owners of collectible products is to know your industry. I'm sure this common sense to some owners, but you need to actively engage yourself within your respective niche or industry. If you sell baseball cards and sports memorabilia, then visit some of the local trade shows. This will give you a chance to view other collectors' products while gauging the value of various products. When you're browsing through some of the trade shows, pay attention to what products are hot, as these are 'trending' products that will likely perform well in your retail store.

Here are some other ways retail store owners can learn more about their industry:

• Trade magazines
• Word of mouth
• Collectors' conventions
• Blogs
• Customer feedback

Google Trends

Google Trends is an incredibly powerful and equally versatile tool for locating trending collectibles, products and keywords. Just as the name suggests, this free-to-use tool is the perfect solution for identifying trends. There are similar websites and tools available (free and paid), but Google Trends is hands down the most powerful, and it's completely free.

So, how does Google Trends work? After visiting the homepage, you'll see a list of the top trending keywords and phrases for the day (you can scroll down to view past dates). While this information alone is helpful, the real benefit of Google Trends comes from the ability to search for specific keywords. Let's say you own a retail store that specializes in vintage dolls; you simply type 'vintage dolls' into the search box at the top of the page and Google Trends will pull up data regarding that particular keyword. Among other things, it tells you when the keyword saw a peak in search volume; which regions are actively searching for it; a list of related keywords; and even a future forecast based of previous data.