heartharmony.com.au

You all know how much I love poking fun at the Snuggies – the blankets with sleeves. But somewhere amidst all the laughter and the jokes the darn things sold and sold well. Thousands of people bought the backwards hospital gowns, so rather than being a one hit wonder, the Snuggies blanket  manufacturers have now brought out a new Snuggie designer range and chose to launch it at NY Fashion week.

I have my suspicions that a good 50% of all Snuggies last year were bought as gag presents, to be filmed in You Tube videos or to be worn on pub crawls.

The Snuggy fad sort of reminds me of other cringe-worthy niche business ideas/fads over the years – pet rocks, moon boots, roller blades, sea monkeys and hula hoops. Each had their day in the sun after making a mountain of money for the inventors and then slowly faded away only to be found in discard piles at garage sales.

It will be interesting how the new zebra patterns, leopard spots and dog Snuggies actually sell this year. Perhaps the gag will have worn off (we can only hope).

Until that time, I tip my hat to a very quirky niche business (and no … I will not be buying one!).

I give you fair warning though – the first of the designer Snuggie spam emails hit my spambox this morning,  so beware the coming spam onslaught.

Until next time

Ingrid Cliff

We put your business into words

Heart Harmony – Freelance Writer