Editor’s note: This article was first published in July 2011, when coolhunting was presented as a new profession, the economic crisis was current, and the trikini was described as that year’s swimwear trend.
The term coolhunter combines the English words “cool” and “hunter”. It is a new profession that is already in frequent demand and very well paid, because coolhunters are the people in charge of steering the manufacturing process or, more precisely, of predicting what a company should make a few months in advance.
The coolhunter comes from the fashion business, where these professionals had to work out in September which garments people would be wearing the following January or August. This new and lucrative profession has now spread to all kinds of markets. A coolhunter has to give customers what they want even before they know they are going to want it, which makes coolhunters trend speculators.
The problem with this profession, as with many other new professions, is that there is confusion about exactly what it involves and, as usual, there are certainly no universities that teach you how to hunt trends.
What it takes to be a coolhunter
A coolhunter needs a special gift, a knowledge of marketing, and plenty of psychology and sociology. These days they spend hours studying how users behave on social networks, trying to guess what those users will want next year, so you could say that, in a way, they have to be fortune-tellers.
However, when we spoke to a professional coolhunter with five years’ experience, we were told it isn’t that hard if you analyze users’ common patterns and the news that interests them:
“If we know that the sequel to a children’s film will be released in six months, we analyze the previous release and the demand there was for products related to the film and the character. We watch American film releases closely, because US product placement sets the trend 95% of the time.”
Why is there such strong demand for coolhunters in times of crisis?
Business owners and would-be entrepreneurs should take note here. Demand for this kind of professional grows in times of crisis because, when everything was going well, anyone could start a business and make money in the short term.
“The problem for companies comes when the traditional business model doesn’t work and they have no choice but to innovate. Even then, being innovative isn’t enough; you have to create innovation, which means detecting consumers’ needs even before they have them. And if our research is wrong and the trend never takes off, we have to use marketing to create it ourselves with aggressive advertising campaigns.”
“For us professionals, the crisis has been good news: our market value has shot up, and not just anyone can spot or create a trend anymore.”
In short: this year a new swimwear trend emerged, the trikini. Coolhunters already knew in March 2010 that the trikini would be in fashion in July 2011. Did they hunt down the trend… or simply create it?
Further reading
- Community manager: the great unknown
- The 10 jobs of the future
- The most promising green professions
- The most profitable businesses
Featured image: Philafrenzy, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
