“My mission is to inspire designers and creatives into finding trends that won’t just be a flash in the pan,” Bisgaard said.

“The question that keeps me up at night is ‘why do we keep buying things that we don’t need?’” “The answer starts with the consumer; if you don’t have a consumer you don’t have a trend.”

Bisgaard said that trend complexity had changed over the past 10 years as the world had become digitised and globalised. However, one thing that hadn’t changed was that trends can be qualified by customers’ emotional preferences.

She said that the five-step process to identifying trends and commercialising them remained the same despite the change in consumer profiles.

Step 1: Spot
“The first step is to spot new trends by reading searching, travelling, looking, trying and thinking about things and people around us. Find consensus on new things in various areas and fields,” Bisgaard said.

Step 2: Activate
“The second is to activate the trends by answering questions which correspond with the four modern overlapping customers.”

“The questionnaire must score 7/10 like answers, otherwise the trend may need modification, such as a change in colour, to make it strong.” These questions relate to the lifestyle concepts that also reveal if a trend can create volume.

Step 3: Match the lifestyle concept
“There are four types of overlapping consumers, Trends, Style, Classic and Normcore,” Bisgaard said.

“Trend consumers tend to be extrovert and individual, they are mostly young, they like change, stimulants, unique products and are after new, edgy, avant-garde, and the shortterm experience.”

“Style consumers are extrovert and community focused, mostly women and like harmony, new details, style icons, coherence, the long term and mainstream.” “They are after social, balance, wellbeing and are engaged.”

The third consumer category is Classic. Both Individual and Introvert, and mostly men, they are the type of consumer who would buy a slightly fancy car or a classic shirt with a style tweak to the collar or buttons.

“They like the rational, success, power and results and are after the conventional, empowering and longevity.”

“The final is Normcore which are community focused and introvert. They like being anonymous, are typically anti-trend, like things built for life and are late adopters. They are after tradition, loyalty, security and calmness.”

“They are typically older, and as we age we process information slower, so can often refuse to take on new info, just shut down.” Bisgaard added that it is possible to have Style men, and Classic women, while media usage for Trend is likely to be snapchat, for Style it is Instagram and Facebook, Classic prefers Linkedin while Normcore reject social media instead consuming traditional print, TV and radio.

Step 4: Create
Bisgaard says that Steps 1-3 essentially give the building blocks to create or buy products matching trends and customer types.

Step 5 - Marketing
The final step is about setting the marketing to match the lifecycle of a product. Many products may start as a Trend consumer product before becoming a Style consumer product, others may start as a Style Product and become a Classic consumer product. Again, still some products may never leave the Trend consumer category.