The top trend we see at Grommet
One of the coolest things about launching a product every day is we have a direct, tangible pulse on consumer sentiment. People tell us what they think in three ways:
- Taking action: Buying or sharing a Grommet.
- Public feedback: We watch the comments about each Grommet like hawks, both on our site, and in our social media based communities like Pinterest.
- Private feedback: We have a very high response rate to our survey work and our customer tends to provide a lot of color in their open-ended answers.
What’s trending now? Trending hard? It’s: Made in USA. Comments by Grommet customers on the origin of a product are up 750%, since 2011.
Our Grommet partners are responding to the call too. I asked Grommet Ideas Manager Kate Reynolds Mcleod about this and she said,
It’s so different than even a year ago. When I talk to a potential Grommet they are already expecting me to ask the “Where do you manufacture?” question. They immediately tell me if a product is made in the USA and they are especially hesitant to admit if a product is made in China. Sometimes they will spend 10 or 20 minutes to tell me about their extensive efforts to repatriate production, and how hard it can be to recover lost domestic manufacturing capabilities.
We aren’t alone in observing this trend. There was a good article in the Sunday New York Times on this topic: “A Label that has Regained its Luster.” Here’s an excerpt:
But the embrace of domestic goods has also moved beyond scruffy D.J. types in Brooklyn who plunk down $275 for a pair of hand-sewn dungarees sewn from Cone denim from the company’s White Oak plant in North Carolina. The adherents now include “urban creatives, high-net-worth individuals, locavores, liberals, conservatives.”
Smells like Grommet spirit.
Jules Pieri 
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