In this informal conversation Sam Parr and a co‑host explore emerging consumer trends and business opportunities. They note that searches for sleep‑related products now exceed those for meditation, citing Calm’s focus on sleep stories and personal habits like using Alexa nature‑sound apps and melatonin. Sam shares a story about a Chinese billionaire who built a fortune by rebranding melatonin as a premium sleep aid. The discussion then shifts to the do‑it‑yourself (DIY) personal‑care space: a large, underserved community creates perfume at home, a market with high margins (e.g., Paris Hilton’s $5 billion perfume line) but few turnkey kits. They compare this to Warby Parker’s disruption of eyewear and suggest kits, marketplaces, and kid‑friendly versions as viable products. Finally, they identify DIY soap and juicing as additional home‑made trends, highlighting the appetite for customizable, craft‑oriented consumer goods.
Chapters
So on trends, we released this on Tuesday. Two things were interesting that our guys found, or Steph and our guy. So men and women found, um, which we only have two people.
So, uh, so your guy and gal found that two things.
Uh, I'm, I'm like thinking about all of it. Uh, first everyone talks about meditation being like the most popular, like being a huge trend right now. People searching for sleep is actually significantly more, like sleep products. And this makes total sense because Calm, I'm a subscriber to Calm.
Sleep stories.
They're pushing sleep like crazy.
Yeah, sleep stories I think was the breakout product for, the breakout feature for Calm.
That's crazy. And so I didn't realize this until they like pointed it out and I'm like, oh yeah, that does make sense. Sleep is way bigger than meditation, and meditation is huge.
Sleep is also, um, a lot of people search for it because, um, uh, so for meditation, you're trying to teach a new habit. Sleep, everybody does. Also for sleep, a lot of people have problems sleeping, so they will actively search for and pay for solutions that will help them sleep better.
I, I pay for a bunch of 'em. I pay for a, what's your sleep? An Alexa app called, uh, Nature Sounds. And they have like 26 sounds and I pay extra money to combine them. So my, the one I sleep to is Winter Railroad.
And so what does that sound like?
It's a train going through the mountains in winter.
What's the winter part? What is the sound of winter?
You hear like wind.
Oh, okay. I love it. I feel like you shared something very personal there. I love it. Winter railroad.
I go, Alexa, play nature sounds. Or sometimes I'll do ship in winter cuz it sounds like an icebreaker. And then Alexa, turn off in 20 minutes.
And that's it. Dude, this is also like one of these, um, you know, hackathon projects, or some developers like, okay, watch this, just say two words and I go search the internet for sounds and I smash them together and it makes an audio thing. Yeah, like this shit. At FurCon's next hackathon, they should build this.
Like, uh, I don't even know what it could be. Like, chickens in China Street.
Yeah, exactly. What happens to Sarah? She doesn't like— does she like the same?
Yeah, she's down with it. She's down with it.
Um, so do you take any sleep aids? Like, like, uh, like like a vitamin or supplement or CBD or something like that?
Melatonin.
Melatonin?
Yeah.
Does that work, help, or?
Yeah, it does. If I really can't sleep, I'll take one of those Unah, did my computer die? I think it died. One of my Unah, Unah Gel, is that what it's called? Unasoft? It's basically like a mild dosage of NyQuil without the medicine part.
Oh, that's good. So, okay, so it's, The way some people take NyQuil just to sleep. And so this is the just to sleep part.
It's just I don't have a cough. Yeah, it's just a light version. You don't take that stuff?
I heard this phrase today. I could sleep in a ditch. So I just— when I decide to go to sleep, I instantly fall asleep and I do not wake up at night ever. And so I'm blessed.
I am typically like that as well, but not as bad. There's this guy that we should profile. He He, uh, he's a Japanese billionaire or sorry, a Chinese billionaire. And he started a, uh, so he's a, he's a big shot now and he owns like half a bank and all this other shit. And he got rich by creating a melatonin. He just took melatonin and rebranded it and made it sexy and called it a sleep aid and whatever. It got huge. And then he launched the Zynga of China. Um, and he ended up buying like the building that they lived in, just like Zynga and, or that they worked in and it became this huge thing. We'll have to do— I'll have to bring him up because I love him because he's reckless and he's built a fortune and lost it all like 3 times.
Right. Yeah. You love that.
I love those guys.
Okay.
And then we also talked about do-it-yourself perfume. So apparently that's a huge community is do-it-yourself perfume. And there's not a ton of companies in the space.
So what's— what's happening? What are these people trying to do? They don't want to buy perfume. They want to mix their own at home.
Yeah. So basically perfume is a huge business. Paris Hilton. A lot of people forget about her. She has sold roughly $5 billion of her perfume.
Cycling back to the porn conversation earlier, okay, Paris Hilton, yes.
Yes, and let's say her stuff costs $100, which it doesn't, it's typically 90% margin.
Yeah, incredible.
So, huge fat margins. And everyone now knows this, and so the idea here is that people are trying to make their own perfume at home, and it's got, there's a lot of sub subreddits around it, a lot of communities who discuss different perfume, like how to create your own perfume, but there aren't too many companies that are making it easy to make your own perfume and formulas and things like that.
Dude, that makes a lot of sense. This is like one of those industries where when you hear about the winner later, you're like, oh, okay, it was set up for success. So for example, Warby Parker, you know, one of the reasons Warby Parker works so well was that the existing eyewear, eyeglass, you know, industry was all owned by this one conglomerate, Zottica, that had pricing power and was marking shit up like crazy. So they didn't have to like invent something to lower the price. They just had to not be greedy and be like, okay, yeah, we can offer this at a fair price and still have margin. And so, and so you own cologne? I own cologne. And so what you're saying is basically cologne vastly marked up in the same way razors are super marked up and Dollar Shave Club came in. But instead of somebody just making a Dollar Shave Club version of cologne, they're giving you a DIY kit. And then these like probably Reddit communities of homebrewers for perfume.
Yeah, it's actually pretty great.
And there's an infinite number of recipes and scents, so you're gonna— you're gonna try a bunch.
Is if you took it a step further, an interesting sense could be sold already.
Yeah, so you could create a marketplace where you could sell yours. Yeah, you too, just even to your own friends and family. You could create a kit for people to do this and make a better kit. I'm sure there's one that exists. Another idea, you know, we were talking about kids stuff earlier, like my niece would love to mix her own perfume. She would, that would be like a great afternoon. And my sister would buy her, you know, this little kid-friendly perfume making kit. And it's like one of the arts and crafts things that she gets to do. And she makes it, then everyone who comes over, she gets to show them their perfume. I think you could do this for kids and it would be a big deal.
Here's another angle that we found in trends is Soap, do-it-yourself soap.
Mm-hmm.
Big thing. People wanna make their own soap. And, uh, what was the third one? Uh, um, juice. But we already know, know that that's right.
Juicing. Yeah. Okay.
Um, DIY. That's pretty great.
I like that. I would've never known about that. That's, uh, pretty fascinating to me. In fact, I'm gonna tell my sister to start this business with the DIY perfume for kids.
