“Every trend has its early signs” ... The convenience-store hit-product planner who predicts trends [fn’s Person]

[Financial News] “Trends don’t suddenly appear overnight. Small movements build up and then, at some point, suddenly burst into view. What matters is how quickly you spot the signs.”
Lee Eun-bora, head of the emart24 Trend Research Team (Photo) spots trends ahead of others. A veteran, she has 17 years of experience in the convenience-store industry and 12 years as a merchandise planner (MD). She currently leads the Trend Research Team, established last November. The team is working to identify convenience-store hits through a “multi-product” strategy that applies a single trend across multiple product categories. Products launched this year have totaled some 150, with sales of about 6.3 million units.
Her work doesn’t simply stop when she clocks out. Whether in the evening or on weekends, when she comes across standout content while browsing social media (SNS), she shares it with her team through a separate channel that doesn’t send notifications. On Mondays, she and her teammates review the several dozen ideas gathered over the weekend and compare them with artificial intelligence (AI) analysis data.
Team leader Lee explained, “Personal social media algorithms only show content tailored to one’s own tastes, so I can’t be sure that what I see is actually a trend. We need to cross-check it against data to objectively track the direction of trends.”
A leading example of a trend spotted early this way is “yellow cheese.” Starting late last year, Lee and her team noticed a gradual increase on TikTok and other platforms in content built around a “cheese overload” concept, with lots of cheese. They then confirmed actual product demand through social media screening and on-site research at well-known bakeries. Based on this, they quickly launched 13 products in February this year under the “Crazy Cheese” concept, featuring yellow cheese and generous amounts of cheese. As the yellow-cheese craze later took off, the flagship product line even saw its sales buck the trend.
Meanwhile, products that weren’t expected to do much sometimes become unexpected “blockbusters.” The “Iced Candied Sweet Potato” launched last August was one such case. At the time, frozen desserts were a category that had not attracted much attention at convenience stores. “For a product with no sales data, even deciding whether to produce it is a challenge,” Lee said. “I had internal stakeholders taste the product themselves and worked to build consensus that ‘at this level of quality, it could have potential.’” In the end, the initial batch—prepared at about 10 times the scale of existing frozen desserts—sold out within 12 days of launch.
Before joining the convenience-store industry, Lee also had the unusual experience of serving as a female military morale and public affairs officer at a front-line General Outpost (GOP) in Gangwon Province. She did it out of curiosity, thinking, “If I don’t try it now, I may never get the chance.” “In the military, once a goal is set, you have to carry it out without fail,” Lee said. “My military experience helped because, as an MD, I also have to persuade and lead many people as the leader of the product categories I oversee.” She added, “The Trend Research Team is the architect that draws up the blueprint for hit products. We’ll continue to work on differentiating our planning so consumers come to see emart24 as a place where they can always find new and interesting products.”
[email protected] Kim Hyun-ji Reporter