Bernard Lunn at Read/Write/Web has an interesting new post on 10 “Microtrends” that could form the basis of future start ups. One prediction is the end of mass markets.
7. The end of mass markets. This relates to most of the other trends. Small, niche, specialist will beat mass produced. This is why Etsy may be a big winner from this Web 2.0 cycle. There are probably other opportunities around this trend.
RWW has talked up niche production in the past and I think their thesis is correct, but local/individual production seems an unlikely way for it to happen. Etsy is a great company and has created a way for artisans to sell their goods online, but it is hard to see how that would translate into larger structural changes.
Amazon crushed all the other e-book stores from the early 90′s not by ignoring technology or aggregating thousands of bookstores, but by harnessing content management systems, advanced logistical processes, and recommendation algorithms that are extremely powerful at scale. In the end those innovations did more to open the mass market than if 1000′s of independent book stores had put up their own sites.
In the world of physical goods I think there will be more winners, but the pattern will be similar. Smart companies will offer their customers a way to “co-create” explore “Mass-customization” or enable “Personal fabrication” and there will be an increase in product diversity. However, meaningful product diversity will likely arise when companies invest in technology that allow customers to add significant value to their products. Every product category has a host of difficult configuration, manufacturing, and marketing issues that will require unique solutions and novel processes to solve. It seems more “voices” will be a result of this change rather than the cause.
