August 14, 2013: The Return of the 90s
I’m not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing, but the 1990s are apparently hot again-
’90s fashions in particular. Just the other day a friend of mine who owns Sunscape Eyewear, an eyewear manufacturing company, showed me their new round glasses, a so-old-it’s-new-again shape for eyewear. In fact, Advertising Age magazine reports, “Queries for ’round sunglasses’ in June of this year were 22 percent higher than last June and 170 percent higher than June 2011.”
But it’s more than ’90s eyewear that’s heating up the search engines. Consumers were also searching for “crop tops” (up 150 percent from 2012), “acid wash shorts” (up 78 percent) and “jelly sandals” (up 40 percent). Remember Zubaz, those loudly-colored, zebra-striped pants? The magazine reports that the company’s online sales are up 47 percent this year over 2012, while Google searches for Zubaz rose 163 percent.
Ad Age says this 90s revival is “strongest among those consumers who weren’t yet born during its heyday.” But that means teens and tweens-and that’s a very lucrative market for small businesses to tap.