Posted By Vonna on December 7, 2009

Many years ago when I worked in Visual Merchandising, one of the things that always gave me a kick was planning displays, or even better, shop concepts, for an emerging trend. I loved being the first kid on the block (meaning either the first VM in my company or the first in my mall) to spot a new fad and run so fast with it that the others were left behind, yelling me, too! By the time they caught up, my store had moved on to the next hot thing while the others kept trying to beat one more mile out of the old horse.

The funny thing about fads was that they rarely started in the most likely places—the runways of New York, Paris and Milan. They started by people seeing something they like right here at home—at the cinema and on the playground.

I loved going to movies, and for many years, I loved my job. Combining the two was fun, fun, fun. Regardless of the setting of the movie, whatever clothing was portrayed in the big hits would be immediately in demand. This carried over into the home furnishings market as well. People didn’t just want to look like the characters in these films; they wanted that same mood in their bed linens and dinner plates. Of course, buyers and designers work so far ahead of the time when merchandise hits the sales floor that these kinds of predictions were hard to make, and surprises at the box office often ruined everyone’s hopes.

Nevertheless, after I saw a movie that had great crowd reaction, I’d pull together a shop concept from merchandise culled from all around the store, then back it up with supporting displays in each department. This was not something that many Visual Merchandisers had the freedom to do, at least not back when I was a VM. The floor space in department stores was as jealously guarded as the borders of warring countries. I was always lucky to work for a store manger who supported me in whatever I wanted to do (within my budget, of course, but sometimes they would surprise me by really loosening the purse strings to help me out with a particular idea).

Another fun way to guess which fads would be the hottest of the season was to see what kids were interested in. Which toys and cartoons generated the most excitement and the fiercest loyalty? Elements of these soon filtered into the children’s clothing lines. A season or two later, these same elements, slighted revisioned, would find their way into clothing for teens, then adults. Instead of waiting two seasons for the market to catch up, I’d seek out merchandise that had a similar feel and start putting up displays. By the time the trend hit the market, my store already had a reputation for being the go-to place for this look.

Now I’m in a new industry. My old techniques for trend spotting won’t work. I can’t look at what’s happening in the movies, because most movies came from books that were published years before. Also, getting a book written and published doesn’t happen overnight. By the time I wrote the book, the fad would probably be over. By the time the book was published the fad would be ancient history. When I was in Visual Merchandising, there were not many video games. Nowadays, toys are frequently linked to movies and video games which have their own line of highly commercial books, and they are all released simultaneously to get the biggest bang from the fleeting fad.

So I’m on my own. I must pull ideas from the little sparks that pop into my head. The work I do now of writing books for kids and teens may be the genesis of a new trend. Or not. When I start a new novel there is no way of knowing whether it will be a hit or a flop.

Visual Merchandising was fun—making something cohesive from the scattered ideas of others. But as much as I loved my job at the time, I love writing far more. It’s tough to beat the thrill of starting an idea from scratch and building it into a whole new world.

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