Holiday Design Trends with Tracy Hazzard

Protect your brand, product or invention from the hazards of consumer product launching and go from idea to product to big brand. With guidance from retail product design and development experts Tracy and Tom Hazard. Get the insider secrets to put the right things in the right order with the right resources so you can out design, outsource and out profit your way to retail success.

Hey there product launchers. Excited to talk more holiday week? It is Christmas in July. Well, technically it's June while we're recording this, but it'll be July when it airs. So we're talking holiday trends and today we're going to talk design trends. On Tuesday we talked color trends. And then of course, we've had a great episode that we did with Brenda Creamy where we talked about sort of seasonal strategies for how you might handle Amazon and what you can really expect from the seasonal nature of Amazon. Or if you're only offering products in that season and it could be summer season or it could be holiday season, it doesn't really matter, it's just your timing is off. So if you're planning like July Prime Day and doing summer season as your big season because of your product type, that might be ideal too. So definitely watch that one. And then coming up, Timothy Bush and I from Timothy Bush does the on the Shelf podcast. We're going to do a whole strategy discussion on inventory management and things that become issues, especially when you're on the shelf or headed into your first season in mass market. It's a huge ordeal of product management and thought process and you definitely need expert advice in this particular area. And he's been there and done it again and again. So I want to talk today, though, about design trends, because they matter. I mean, people are like, oh, so we'll just make trees and reindeer and snowmen and stuff like that. And that's great. And all of those things, they each have their own trends and what's shifting and what's happening in the artistic nature of, like, how snowmen look and things like that. So this is not a deep dive into that. I do do that for people. So if you have a particular area and you want to know more about snowmen or stars or penguins or what's going on in a particular category or character, you can contact me and we can talk further about what that looks like. But this is just sort of a generalized thing for you to kind of expect what might be coming up so that if there is some kind of motif decision or material choice that you're making, you can make them along the lines of what's going to be coming up and I'm going to talk a little bit about why I know and think that this is going to be coming up. So without further conversation, let's dive into the PowerPoint presentation I created for you. We'll go right into having a discussion on what I've got for you to share, and we'll talk about it in greater detail. So we talked about color trends earlier in the week, and they go hand in hand with design trends. I want to keep that in mind because design trends are affected by the color choices that are made. So we talked a lot about grays and this more somber tone to it. But there's lots of little mini sparks and things that are going on here. And so some of that is reflected in the design trends, and sometimes the design trends are in contrast to that. So especially trends that happen with children. So we'll talk a little bit more about that, though. So why do design trends matter? So design trends matter because we have all kinds of decisions that have to be made. And when we're investing in inventory or we're making these decisions so far in advance, it helps for us to understand what's going on in the generalized marketplace. It helps for us to understand what might be going on and how design is shifting. Is it coming more whimsical? Is it going more cottage? Is it happening more modern? Like what's going on with those design trends? And so when we look at them, we can make some more micro decisions about our products and where we're going to take them. So these things are really important, but they're also important to tie into a trend. Just from a change your listing standpoint, I'm going to call it that, like the verbiage that you use the photos that you choose to photograph it in. Let's say you have a home decor product that you make, and while it may be a great home decor product all year, and that's where your photos are, you might want to take a holiday picture. If you take a holiday picture and add it to your listing or add it to your mark materials or to your social media channel, you want to make sure that that's on trend, because otherwise you're not going to get the shares you expect from it. You're not going to get bloggers to pick it up. So you want to expect because it's going to need to tie into the visual story that they're telling at that time too. And a lot of these tie into these design trends. So being on trend really does matter in terms of boosting your sales. So last year we had a lot of blue Christmas trees. Blue was really in. Blue's not in now. Purple's in. Something that we talked about in the color trend forecast. If you haven't seen it, go watch it. So this sort of like, I don't want to call it gaudy, but it is a little bit gaudy. It's like bold and bright. And it was a way to just shift the conversation at the end of last year that a lot of editorial publications came out with. But I have to say that we didn't see actual lot of traction of it. Selling it was in a lot of magazines, but people weren't buying it. And I think that's why this year has reflected to a much more simplistic view and has really shifted. So blue Christmas trees out, more simplified, modern Christmas trees with a much more somber and simple and timeless palette. And it is tapping into what's going on. So last year we saw a lot of very similar interior design trends, like this sort of Twiggy thing was going on there. But this year we're seeing these sort of tree alternative themes, but they're more stylized and much more modern In a little upscale materials, they don't look so handmade. So while there were a lot of DIY looking styles, do it yourself looking styles and a lot of natural. Right. That was going on, this year we see a continuation of those interior design trends matching with the decor. And that decor is not as DIY or not as natural or handmade looking. There's some DIY in it, but it's not as significant as, or it's not as rustic. I'm going to say there's still a little bit of rustic and we're going to talk about that in a minute. But the real key to the interior design trends. So I think it surprised a lot of people because we hadn't seen that. We'd seen holiday be in contrast to the design trends. So, like thinking about what was going on as you were decorating your home over the course of the year, you would accent for Christmas. And so Christmas would be the spark of color. And instead it's much more integrated into the environment. So that's really what we're seeing there. So are you ready to hear the predictions for the future and design trends that are going to be for this holiday? So interior integration like we talked about, so you can see how there might be little things that go on that would be kept into your space. So it looks like they've got like a little fawn in the picture frame there. You could change that out for any season. So that part of the interior integration is there. It looks like you've got. You could hang any message. It could say joy at the holiday time, but it could say love the rest of the year. So these are the things where you're seeing this, those garlands that are going across it. I mean, you could be celebrating birthday. You don't have to be celebrating Christmas with that. Same thing with the light fixture. It looks like Christmas ornaments, but it could be utilized all times of year. You could see instead of using trees, you could be using seashells in the summer. So the interior integration is like using accents and moving things around, but creating synergy within the sort of interior theme you've already created. That's why I'm calling the theme interior integration. And this also creates a much more timelessness. So you can take out anything that might be directly Christmas related and sort of remove it by January. And yet you could still keep up the majority of what you've got. And so you don't have to redecorate. And it's not a short term decoration mode that you're in for three weeks of the holiday or something like that. So I think that's another reason is it's just sort of time commitment. You take the time to decorate. The last thing you want to do is turn around and then take it right down again. So if you can put it up early November and use it through Thanksgiving, through Christmas and through New Year's and sometime into January before you switch it up again, that makes for much more reason to be buying something to use in your environment rather than just this impulse buy of something you're going to use for a few weeks. So of these sort of modern tree trends that we were talking about, sort of this modern shift of it, you can see that there's still a little rusticness. The choice of woods, the choice of finish are there, but the shapes are really modern. The cutouts are going on there. There's some amount of intricacy happening. We're seeing a lot of texture and things coming into this. We're seeing a lot more, I'm going to call them sort of Black Panther inspired textures, where you have much more textures going, lines, geometric shapes going on. And I think that's inspiring. Some of this modern tree trends look sort of that sort of modern ness that is happening. But it has a nod to sort of the old but still geometric. And that's really one of the things that we want to keep going here, if you have a choice to do something that is much more whimsical, I would instead choose something more geometric. So this rustic DIY is still being revisited, right? We're still using rustic woods, we're still doing painting on them. But what we put on them is simple. We may have no decor on there, no spots of color. Keeping the wood very natural or keeping it very gray and putting simple things in white on there. White is one of our color trends. So this is just a little shift in how the DIY looks or in a lot of cases, what you guys are making out there is the production version of the DIY style. So keeping that in mind that this is what expect the purchasing trends to be about. Starry lit inside. So we're bringing a lot more light inside our spaces. We've been seeing a lot of lighting fixture growth in the interior markets. We've been seeing them with baubles and balls and lamps that are created or light fixtures that are created out of multiple pieces that are hung. And they're doing extremely well. And they've been on the growth trend for a couple of years now. And we're still seeing an increase in them for this season. There's be a lot more holiday star shapes and things like that. But stars can also translate into January and that's really one of these. Like it can spread out. It doesn't just have to do with Christmas, it can do with the whole winter season. I'm pointing out the. I know they're round and not star shaped, but the glass bulb light fixture that's there, we have seen in some of the factories, star shaped ones. I have no pictures of them, but we see them. They're coming up. So you could have this light fixture and replace out your balls with stars or replace a few of them. And that would be a way in which you could decorate for the holiday, but keep it still the rest for the rest of the year. So we're seeing a lot of these come in paper cutout stars, wood stars, the tin star that you see with all the ornaments balled inside of it. This was a trend for a while. We're using glass hurricanes and dumping all kinds of metallic colored holiday ornament bulbs. And so you see that continuing here. But we're using alternative shapes, we're using things like stars. There's a lot of this romantic texture and remember how I was referring to that sort of geometric shapes that were going on. If you're doing something that's in fashion. And so that's really why I brought this slide in. If you're doing something that's more in fashion, more for women, premium and high end, we're seeing a lot of velvet and silk combinations, beading and sequins. And we're also seeing it though, more in the color that's on the top in the wedding dress with that gray and champagne color, Little bits of fur and feathers, these things are coming in. So we have a lot of romantic textures going on and those romantic, flowy kinds of things. But we're seeing them with a little bit of sparkle and a little bit of richness like fur. And we're just seeing a little bit of that kind of premium item that comes in from having a little bit of a satiny look to it. So just be thinking about that. So depending on the market, how upscale you're going, or how much towards just women you're going, there might be a little bit of differences and nuances. And fashion, of course, fashion accessories follow fashion in a much more direct way. And this is the trend that we're seeing in that. But we're seeing darker colors here. So lots of fashions in dark colors or in very, very neutralized, grayed out palettes with sparks of white and champagne. This one is expanded from the color trends of using the purple, but we've come into a plaid. So especially in lots of kid dresses, things like that, we tend to see a lot of plaids, men's ties, we're going to see a lot of plaids with purple accents like this. Those cufflinks in the corner are a good indicator of this. We're just seeing purple as coming into being a holiday color this year. And we're seeing it come in and utilized in this kind of accent way. Kids, unicorns, okay. Penguins. We've seen a lot of penguins, a lot of snowmen. This is the year of the unicorn. We are seeing unicorn everywhere. As you can see, we're even seeing unicorn reindeers start to emerge. So unicorns are the kids gift of this year. It may cascade for some markets from last year, and that is coming off in unicorn bathrobes and slippers and I mean, unicorn sheets and just everything but the unicorns that are being used in the decor and the environmental pieces that you might be putting on your tree, the ornaments and things like that, they're simple, they're white, they're sparkly, they've got just a little bit of that. They're not garish and rainbow ish and things like that. They're very simplified for this season. If you are doing things direct to kids, though, you may want to reconsider that. And we can always talk about that if you have questions. Can't forget your pets, right? You absolutely can't forget your pets. And we've seen this trend happening for quite some years now. It's only increased because there's been more manufactured versions of it than DIY versions of it. But cats and dogs and getting them their own stockings, integrating them right into your environment. Right. Because our pets are our family. So anything you have that might be a great pampered pet present should be repackaged and remarketed. This is something that Brenda was talking about is like a strategy for the holiday is to rebundle things and group them together and give them new packages and things like that. And this is a great way to do that because pets are important and they are a significant amount of what is purchased online and in stores. We talked a little bit about trends that were continuing over. And these are ones that are. That picture of the cake is in the color trends because of this nice silver gray that's going on to it. But last year we saw a lot of, I'm going to call them rustic cakes, right? Raw cakes, natural cakes. Right. This kind of idea where you basically had very little frosting on the outside of it and it would just give you this roughened look of the cake coming through of it and little bits of frosting coming on. So it looked like your cake was distressed. This year we're seeing much more of this sort of like naturalized form of cakes. It's happening in all kinds of pastries and other things. So if that's your market area or you're doing candies or foods and other things, be thinking about how this trend is affecting you. It's just shifting into bringing in more sugar again, because why not? It's totally fun up on the top. Last year was really the color of that sort of garnet color, was the color of the year. And so that's why that was seen so much in there. But the reason I'm showing this particular bouquet and in floral arrangements, because if you're choosing flowers is we're seeing a lot more unusual. People call them ugly flowers. Proteas. It's actually my favorite flower and I'm thrilled to see it come back into trend because it's really expensive and hard to find. But we are starting to see more of that at the holiday time again, and we expect to see more of that throughout the Year as well. So you see kind of these more unusual flowers that are coming in, but are hardier, dry really well and stick around for much longer in the season so they don't die off quickly. And that's something that is keeping with that trend that's happening in an overall products of any kind. Right. You want it to stick around more than a few days. So here's that going on here. The next one. I had a lot of this wrapping paper that looks stamped or handmade. We're seeing a lot more of it, like pre printed now. And here's where I encourage you to go for the simple small motifs. Not gigantic, not garish, really. Keeping it simple, understated. You could even do it tone on tone. So you could have dark green paper with silver green stamped on that, or you could go the other way and keeping the wrapping really, really simple. And then below that, I just want to point out, because we have seen them throughout the year, mermaid sequins. So it's the sequence where you brush them one direction and they say one thing or they show it one single color and you brush them the other direction and they show the color the other direction. So they're on kids clothes. I have an ugly Christmas sweater from last year that says naughty one direction and nice the other. So lots of these are emerging. People are real fans of them. Kids love, love them, cannot get enough of them and want them at all seasons right now. So I just wanted to point those out because that trend is continuing through the holidays again this year. So little bit of recap on what our trends were. We're talking modern geometric cutout shapes. They could be stars, they could be trees, they could be snowflakes, it could be anything. But keep into this geometric, higher material, less distress, more like a rough finish, less raw wood look. Unicorn dreams. We've got unicorns everywhere. Keeping them simple, keeping them white, keeping them sweet is another thing to think about. We've got a lot of romantic shine going on if you're in women's clothing, women's accessories, fashion of any kind, interior stars. If you're doing lighting and decor, purple plaid. We're seeing that in menswear, children's wear and some amount of women's wear. But I would say more on the accent side. So you might have a belt or you might have a bag. And then of course, we've got pampered pets. You cannot think enough about coming up with or repackaging your product for our holiday gift giving for a pet. So that's kind of it on the overall holiday trends. So anyway, I hope that really helps you guys sort of define what you might do for this holiday season and how things might go for you and where you're going to sort of shift some of the choices that you're making over time. If I didn't cover one of your product areas because these are little soundbites from trend reports that I do for clients and I pulled them out with new images because I don't even share my client images with you of the plans that I have for them. But I wanted to share them with you because if you can tap in, if you can get a small amount of this insider information about what's happening in the marketplace, it's just going to make it easier for you to get your products to be reviewed, to be blogged about, to end up in a Pinterest board, to end up in a product review. So any one of those things could happen for you if you do this right and it also translates into more sales. I know that that happens because when you're looking for a gift and you say, I'm going to do for my kids this year a unicorn theme, I'm going to buy unicorn wrapping paper and I'm going to buy unicorn PJs for Christmas Eve and I'm going to buy unicorn bathrobes and slippers for the next morning and I'm going to buy unicorn ornament for the tree with the year 2018 on it. So all of those things might go about and happen. And so just be thinking about this because you're going to be making some last minute choices here. And if you can make a shift that ties into one of these trends, then you're going to have a better likelihood for success. And of course, you don't want to go and miss the seasonal inventory strategy session with Kim Busch tomorrow. Just make sure that you tune in. We haven't seen a lot of activity on Product Launch Hazards Live. We've been getting a lot of questions and other things dropped into email and chat. But guys, here's your chance. Ask people questions. There were so many great questions that happened before with our IP attorney Jason Webb and questions that have been dropped in for Jeff and Jenna Lieber. So keep in mind that we've got these experts here for you and we can customize it better if you ask us the right questions. So please participate in the next Product Launch Hazards office hours until next time, this is Tracey Hazards.

Thank you for joining us on this episode of Product Launch Hazards. If you'd like to access our product launch experts, strategies, trend reports and ongoing support as you build your big brand. Please go to productlaunchhazards.com and become a member today.