How retailers play guessing games
One of the fun parts of being a shopkeeper is that, through theproducts you shift, you can bear witness to many a fad and fashion well inadvance of its adoption by the public.
A good clothes retailer can probably tell you already what we're all going to be wearing next spring. Music store owners will nonchalantly list the hot bands of 97 with a comforting air of certainty. So what about computer retailers? Can we predict which products and technologies will take the world by storm next year? Of course not.
Ask a buyer about what will sell this Christmas and you'll get a name check of the big seasonal launches - the beat 'em ups, the war games, the soccer and driving sims. A few gung-ho PC sellers will tell you this is the year of the internet PC for the home (just as they told us last year that it was the year of the PCTV). Ultimately, though, everyone is simply hoping to sell more of the same. And next year? Well, that's anyone's guess.
Last year I think we were all about right in our predictions that the bubble would burst in the reference and edutainment CD-ROM market, and that the internet would become a force to be reckoned with. What no-one could have predicted was how rapidly, and on what scale, these things would happen. In both cases, the drop in CD-ROM sales and investment in internet-based products and services has happened much more quickly and in a much bigger way than I for one expected.
Retailers who focused on games, encyclopedias and internet access software at the beginning of the year are probably sitting pretty right now.
But how does a buyer accurately second-guess the market in this way?
Well, you read a lot of magazines, I suppose. And you watch closely what people are buying today, in order to predict what they might need tomorrow.
And you keep your finger on the pulse of popular culture.
Last Christmas, for example, the new Wallace & Gromit animation A Close Shave had the nation glued to its TV screens. This year, it may just be that this enthusiasm for a couple of wobbling lumps of modelling clay could glue a few noses to computer screens with BBC Multimedia's Wallace & Gromit Fun Pack.
Terry Pratchett is currently heading both the hardback and paperback bestseller lists. Psygnosis's Discworld tapped into this consumer hunger for Pratchett product nicely. And Discworld II will no doubt do the same.
Of course, keeping a weather eye out for what's selling in other media markets isn't necessarily going to give you the key to computer retailing success. For example, take a quick look at the bestseller lists of the day: Terry Pratchett heads the book market, Spice Girls and Boyzone dominate the music charts, Eastenders tops the TV ratings, First Wives Club is doing well at the box office, and on video we're buying Toy Story and old episodes of The X Files.
Given that these forces are currently at work on the psyche of the general public, which software title would you think they might be buying?
A cartoon-like historical fantasy about a group of strong independent women and a rabble of unreliable cockney blokes off in search of aliens, perhaps?
No. The best selling title of the moment is Microsoft's latest version of Flight Simulator. Can you see the connection? No, neither can I.
Quite how much money people have in their pockets in order to pursue an interest across all media markets is another issue that can cloud a buyer's thinking. We already know that there's a certain amount of tension in the mind of many a teenager when it comes to choosing between buying a music CD or a game. Not many kids can afford to buy both, and at the moment research suggests that music is winning out.
Recent sales information shows a direct connection between improved music sales and a depressed games market. I guess that this isn't so surprising when you can buy both the Spice Girls and Boyzone albums for less than the price of Crash Bandicoot.
For big stores like HMV and Virgin, this represents a precarious balancing act, so that the successful music department doesn't kill off the games business (or vice versa). There are, you see, dangers as well as opportunities in trying to tap into popular culture.
This isn't, though, just a game for the big multiples. In South London where I live, for example, I have come across no less than three small independent stores advertising a unique technology combination: mobile phones and martial arts videos.
The more cynical among you may suggest that the common link is the ease with which both kinds of product can be sourced through illicit channels.
But I'd suggest that there might also be a nice little demographic niche here that is being exploited - the mobile phone users who like to come home to a tasty bit of kung fu.
Perhaps the suppressed anger that hides inside every mobile phone user for having landed themselves with a mind-boggling phone bill, based on a ridiculously complex charge structure that was never fully explained by the retailer, needs an outlet that these videos supply. Or maybe they're learning a bit of self defence for the day a fellow commuter on the train finally snaps at the words: "I'm on the train. I'll be with you in about half an hour ..."
Tim Wright is editorial director of NoHo Digital, an independent multimedia company.