During 2020, the pandemic and all it has wrought, there were a few trends I’ve noticed that others haven’t necessarily mentioned. I suspect they’ll continue.
Casino and betting domains. Sales were really strong and I believe there will be another year of higher-than-usual sales.
Hand crafts, especially old skills like sewing, crocheting, knitting, cooking, carving, weaving, dyeing, shoemaking, millinery, and on & on. Youtube has a bunch of vintage dressmaking/costuming experts like Bernadette Banner, Abby Cox, and Cathy Hay, all of whom have devoted audiences. People (ok, mainly women) are interested in the long history of fashion from medieval ages on. Supplies and tools for all these pursuits are at a premium in stores that sell them. If you’ve never heard of sewing clips, a rotary cutter, or a bias tape maker, well, now you know these are selling items.
Just a funny aside: In the 1953 SF novel Ring Around The Sun (Clifford Simak), people in American society were joining anachronistic social clubs where they invented for themselves a life in historical times and wrote diaries about it. Simak’s novel kind of predicted the real-life Society of Creative Anachronisms that came into being some decades back, and the Renaissance Fairs that still go on. A kind of escapism into the past I think we’ll see more of.
Positive-sounding domains. These were always a good seller, but I think they might become more so. Keywords like good, neighbor, brother, sister, sunlight, sunshine, community. Not really as a reflection of a happy society, but the opposite; people will feel drawn to what they’re missing.
Educational TV shows. Remember that Mister Rogers has passed away, Electric Company is no more, and kids are homebound far more now. They could use some high-quality programs.
Speaking of children, just looking through Hasbro’s domain list reminded me how strong memories of childhood toys and their matching commercial jingles were, and how lasting the memories are. Even when toys were simple things, these were formative toys and games. Do you remember: Operation, Candyland, Boggle, Chutes and Ladders, Clue, Mystery Date, the Easy Bake Oven, the Furby, the Game of Life, GI Joe, Hungry Hungry Hippos, Ouija Boards, Monopoly, the game manufacturers Parker Bros. and Milton Bradley and PlaySkool, Play-Doh, and Popples? Some newer but some very old.
