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Trending: Ear cleaning kits, FIFINE microphones, and more.

Exploding Topics scours the internet to find emerging trends before they take off.

1. Ear Cleaning Kits

Searches for “ear cleaning kits” are up 226% over the last two years.

What are they?

Ear cleaning kits contain tools like silicone wax removers, metal picks, and irrigation systems.

Many are sold on Amazon or over the counter at supermarkets and pharmacies.

(In fact, one of the top-selling ear kit brands on Amazon grosses an estimated $171k per month.)

What’s next:

Ear cleaning kits are part of the ear health meta trend.

Ear cleaning as a medical treatment has been around for centuries.

But ear cleaning products and services began growing as a mainstream, non-medical trend in Japan in the mid-2000s.

And more recently we’ve seen the same start to happen in the West:

Ear drops that soften the wax for easier extraction.

Ear candles, a DIY approach to removing ear wax.

Ear salons for getting your ears cleaned by someone else.

And ear seeds are gold-coated magnets that provide ear acupressure.


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2. FIFINE

FIFINE is a microphone brand specializing in USB microphones.

The brand has become especially popular thanks to their USB condenser mics. Along with recommendations from tech influencers on YouTube (like Linus Tech Tips).

Their most popular USB mic on Amazon generates approximately $468k in monthly gross revenue.

What’s next:

FIFINE is part of the podcast equipment meta trend.

As podcasting has exploded in popularity, so has demand for high-quality microphones.

(In fact, retail microphone sales have increased from $281.2M to $455M over the last 10 years).

Other startups riding this trend include Podbean, Anchor.fm and Neewer.

3. Funnel Software

Funnel software is no-code software for creating sales funnels (a set of predefined steps that lead a prospective customer to make a purchase).

The current leader in this space, ClickFunnels, is a bootstrapped business that recently hit 9-figures in annual revenue.

But ClickFunnels is far from the only funnel software startup out there. Drip and GrooveFunnels are two other examples of growing companies in this space.

What’s next:

Funnel software is part of the “accessible martech” meta trend.

Accessible martech includes marketing SaaS tools that don’t require lengthy demos or live sales calls in order to try or buy the product. They also tend to have a relatively simple UI.

Examples of companies driving this trend include Mangools, Later, and Wavve.

4. Nanit

Nanit is a brand of smart baby monitors. Their monitors feature HD video, temperature and humidity monitoring, and baby sleep tracking.

The paired app also makes sleep recommendations, records watch time-lapse videos, and resurfaces video memories.

And like Peloton, Nanit also has a monthly subscription model (access to their baby sleep analytics software.)

Nanit has raised $54.2M in VC funding to date. And recently cracked the top 20 of Deloitte’s list of fastest growing US startups.

What’s next:

Nanit is part of the “Peloton for X” meta trend.

Peloton’s annual revenue recently hit $1.8B (100% year-over-year increase.) Approximately 20% of that revenue came via monthly subscriptions.

Which is why dozens of startups are attempting to replicate Peloton’s business model in different product categories.

Other examples of this trend include JaxJox (raised a $10M Series A in October), CLMBR (raised $3.4M last year), and Zwift (valued at $1B+).


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