What will happen to your industry in 2025?

500 Feed Me readers have predictions 🔮

Good morning everyone. A few weeks ago I sent out an email asking Feed Me’s readers to tap into their inner-oracles, to predict what they think will change in their industries — for better or for worse — in 2025. Specifically, I asked respondents to avoid what they want to be in or out, and instead predict what they think will actually happen.

Over 500 anonymous readers responded (thank you). It’s a long letter, so you won’t be able to read the whole thing in your inbox. Some standout predictions include:

In: Thin lips, Jersey City, big personalities, paywalls, Broadway, 24-hour Twitch streaming — “Truman Show shit,” chrome, excessive cocktail garnishes, “human made” as the new form of luxury, immersive retail, and handwritten tests.

Out: Cancel culture, job security, matte lips, chef-y bros, socially responsible investing, swag, working from home, calling the cops on student protesters, and launching your own consulting firm.

(It should be obvious that every industry predicted an AI tsunami.)

Read, share with friends, and debate in the comments. Most importantly, don’t shoot the messenger!

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IN: Substack

• Substack writers will be seen as legitimate, and will be sought after media targets for PR clients.

• I think we'll continue to see brands investing in Substack and looking for other platforms. TikTok's future is so uncertain and the quality of content on there seems to have a taken a hit post-election as the trolls flee Twitter and start spreading conspiracy theories on TikTok. As a consumer/human being, I'm hoping we can distance ourselves from social media and our phones but that's probably wishful thinking.

• I think we will see brands put real budget into Substack. Alex Mill’s collab with Becky will be first of many.

• Legacy brands will pursue Substack-like newsletter programs.

• Substack will finally be a major focus for most PR agencies and in house PRs at big corporations. Small shops know the value, the big guys have been playing catch up but I think 2025 is the year they get there.

IN: Analog

• Direct mail.

• Brick-and-mortar stores and pop-ups. Online shopping is overdone and people are desperate to have an in-person interaction and experience.

• Premium brands will become more analog/physical. Bargain and commodity brands will use AI more.

• More brands with consistent IRL activations/non-digital strategies (print magazine subscriptions, branded book clubs/run clubs etc.).

ALSO IN:

• Legacy companies seeking to work with disrupter agencies, and disrupter clients seeing out establishment agencies. For example, Gap and J.Crew are looking to innovate creative, we saw L’eggs hire the Parade founder to shake things up.

• Brands setting up film studios.

• Job losses. We're fucked. Every single agency meeting I'm in at the moment (run by leadership) talks about how we're going to step further into the embrace with AI in 2025 to produce creative quicker than ever before. No mention of quality, no mention of what that means for the people. All about the bottom line. I also work for one of the networks that just announced the giant "merger" and again, as I said, we're fucked.

• Original creative content. So many companies are turning to AI to produce bland content faster and cheaper than they ever have before. In 2025 I think more brands will attempt to stand out by creating content that actually resonates with their audiences and gets people excited to support the brand. I think lots of small companies are doing this really well right now and I would bet money that larger companies will follow suit. I also think more and more brands will create “clubs” through platforms like TYB or independently to help consumers feel more connected to the brand and to give them a sense of ownership in the direction of the company. "

OUT: Big agencies

• I really think the era of the ad agency is over. The big shops are all struggling, and as a freelancer, I'm getting way more work from production houses, directly from brands, and from freelance consortiums. Nobody wants to work 90 hours a week anymore for middling pay on boring icky work, and the people I see hanging around at the agencies where I freelance are either super green junior people or a few oldsters collecting big paychecks but watching clients flee to specialist shops. The entire middle is hollowed out. It's a slow death, but you couldn't pay me to go back into agency world now.

• Full stack six-figure project creative agencies.

OUT: DEI

• Continued death of DEI marketing and “woke” marketing.”

• Pretending to care about DEI. This is obviously not unique to advertising, and has also been ongoing over the past year plus (watched my old company tearfully explain that they laid off a beloved diversity officer to “improve/standardize DEI programming" across various agencies ...sure!) but given the political climate/forthcoming administration I just can't imagine agency leadership (holding company agency leadership, at least) will prioritize this, or even pretend to care about it.

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IN:

• Really leaning into the cultural 'cool club' of art collectors — meaning how Hauser and Wirth provides collectors with experiences to go along with buying.

• Design (furniture, lighting, collectibles) will continue to grow its market share and position in contemporary culture as the creative class in cultural capitals seek new avenues of exclusivity. We see design replace the waning power of the art market and culture, and the over-saturation of fashion (partly due to TikTok, Instagram, and new media) continues to exhaust. Design has borrowed a lot of the tool kits from Art and Fashion (fairs, opening parties, collaborations) but currently maintains higher cultural capital in many creative circles. You see this trend playing out in your Instagram feed in New York, Paris, and Los Angeles as design products, events, and designers themselves become the new marker of elite tastes across generations. Why was Fendi at Design Miami? Loro Piana at Salone in Milan? This isn’t about a line of products that contribute a negligible amount to these companies bottom line. It’s because this is where the tastemakers and the elite are.

• Artists having agents, art professionals branding themselves as agents. Collaboration between galleries of all sizes. Fashion houses (not just luxury) as patrons. Artists as angel investors. Jersey City as a cultural destination. '80s design.

• The Middle East.

• Buying art for less of an alternative stock investment, and a return to our roots of buying art for the love of it first. A continued turn towards immersive and experimental — away from painting, up on photography, still exploring surreal figuration.

OUT:

• Over the top big pieces: installations, enormous sculpture. I think risk will be OUT. Everyone is a little of afraid of how this election will impact the art world so dealers want small and risk averse shows.

• Cancel culture.

• Launching your own consulting firm/brand. People will grow up and get real jobs.

• As cliché as it sounds, the boundaries between art, fashion, and design will continue to blur as cultural amalgamation in creative capitals continues.

• I think everyone is over the asshole gallerist personality. We are in SALES (and education frankly) - no one is too cool to not engage with interested collectors/non collectors.

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IN: Highly-specific treatments

• There will be more underground/experimental minimally invasive beauty procedures. Many of these with toe the line on what's acceptable by the FDA or not. Why?

  • Age of Maximalism.

  • Service providers will give less of a F about regulations or compliance.

  • RFK Jr., baby.

• Regenerative Medicine (Sculptra, Renuva, Stem Cells etc.).

• The continued obsession with Korea facial procedures.

• Body beauty maintenance. Retinol, lasers, red light, micro needling etc. The industry has thrown everything they can at the face, the body is the next frontier.

ALSO IN:

• Lots of hair products. We’re going to see 18 months of development finally roll out in 2025.

• Fragrance, fragrance, fragrance, and even more cheap bizarrely scented mists.

• Products from dermatologists and aestheticians.

• Digging even harder into “Americana” and 80s aesthetic. Specific beauty trends: red lips, brown lips, orange lips, layered eyeshadows, metallics, glitter, liquid eyeliner returns.

• Thin lips.

OUT:

• Influencer campaigns, founders with no expertise, celebrity brands.

• Overfilled lips.

• Extravagant PR mailers.

• Lip glosses and oils, (overt) lip filler but people will still get it just from better injectors, gourmand fragrance obsession.

• Matte lips. We’re seeing more asks for glosses, oils, high-shine finishes for the lips. Matte is dead.

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IN:

• For podcasts, brands realize that the pre-roll/mid-roll is just the start — full episodes tied to brand messaging is the future. And publishers will start to work on entire episodes/seasons with brands. The episodes end up being the best, most-downloaded, etc.

• Plenty of headlines trying to understand young men.

• Paywalls, paywalls, and more paywalls.

• Transparency —allowing viewers to see how we got the story and reported it.

• My money is on New York Magazine hiring a big name writer. They must have money on the table with Olivia Nuzzi and Jonathan Chait gone in one year. Feels like they need star power — and I bet they'll find it.

• Newsletter-only or newsletter-plus subscriptions. Digital media is moving to subscription models, and legacy media outlets are hitting their subscriber ceiling. With everyone trained by Substack to love newsletters (your influence!), NYT, WaPo, Vox, etc. will want a piece of the pie. Picture it: for a simple $5 a month, you can get all the little newsletters your heart desires. But you can only click through to the full article if you pay the full amount like a good #Resistance pay pig. Oink oink!!!

• Media companies focusing on talent (celebrity-hosted podcasts and guest editing), and more experiential marketing.

• Freelancing. No one wants to or has the budget to hire full-time workers so make sure you're touching base with all your editor friends now.

• 24-hour twitch streaming — Truman Show shit of creators sleeping, etc. Also, leftists getting into listening to Steve Bannon.

• Reading unknown bloggers as status, akin to listening to unknown bands.

• Gatekeeping and exclusivity — more paywalls, more invite-only newsletter and events, less "free" content whether that means free articles or news-by-tweets.

OUT:

• Job security.

• The New York Times’ Style section still having a semblance of authority even among the normies. Even my boomer mother-in-law notices that they write about things one year after every other outlet and your cousin’s Substack have reported on it.

• Truth as we learned it.

• Big-name writers starting their own newsletters. It's an oversaturated market and everyone needs an editor.

• The LA Times. Sad, but that brand is dead dead. Everybody's talking about the decline of WaPo, but it feels like the LAT has officially killed its readership.

• Time, energy and skill spent on providing valuable content.

• Remote work. I get that nobody under 28 wants to hear this, but you can’t gain real influence in a newsroom over Slack.

• Avoiding reporting on certain stories for fear of audience backlash.

• Not totally out, but I think there's going to be some sort of shift/revolution on Substack. It's getting oversaturated and people are forgetting the difference between journalism and journaling (not you though, Emily. You're doing great.)

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IN: AI

• More people comparing GenAI to TI-83s.

• Even more AI-powered product enshittification. Annoyed by AI features you never asked for popping up in your favorite apps and websites? Well, we’ve spent all year building even more egregious ones – and getting ready to ship them ASAP in 2025.

• Two words: Artificial. Intelligence. Leaders will keep yapping about it, investors will keep throwing money at it, and regular people will roll their eyes even harder. While I’m sure there will continue to be advancements in the actual tech, I think AI fatigue will hit its peak in 2025, especially if it leads to more layoffs (which it likely will).

• AI, still…for the next 18 months, until VCs notice that their portfolios of AI-focused startups aren’t performing, and the failure stink rubs off on mature company leadership, too (it’s all social contagion among VCs and big-company C-level leadership).

ALSO IN:

• Ruthlessness.

• Elevating “human made” as the new form of luxury and morality.

• Massively increased tech bro/VC arrogance due to untouchability and invincibility under the new political regime.

• Consolidation of Saas tools for organizations.

• Long days and late nights managing teams across Philippines, Costa Rica and India.

• Conservatism will become more mainstream, more book imprints from that lens. More in-person events (I think the splashy book tour will be back in). Barnes & Noble. Mandatory work from office. Unionizing. Enormous, chunky novels about dysfunctional families. Novels (not just nonfiction/“memoirs”) by influencers. I think there will be at least one big, exciting, literary novel about a sport of some kind (maybe soccer). Contracting freelance editors, designers, publicists instead of employing a full house. Coffee meetings. Self/hybrid publishing.

OUT:

• Expressing real emotions on work Slack.

• Funding female founders.

• My pessimistic forecast is that people will be out. More layoffs because leaders think AI will make for fewer, more efficient employees. And they’ve seen in 2023 and 2024 that (esp big tech) can get away with it — laying lots of people off and still seeing high stock prices.

• We’ll start to see an increase in number of people who “cut the cord” from Big Tech social media platforms as the Alpha generation gets older (and angrier) at what social media has done to their brains, their lives, and their privacy (or lack thereof).

• Work from anywhere.

• Corporate myth-making. I first started working in tech in late Obama years and holy shit it was all "people who work here change the world, we love our culture, everybody can speak there mind, we're like a big start up" etc etc, but I've noticed post-covid how the optimistic vibes have evaporated. Financial austerity, layoffs, re-orgs have turned most of the unicorn darlings into traditional fall-in-line do as your told megacorps (which was always hiding under the surface). And it seems like employees, at least the ones I know, have mostly accepted the new post-tech-optimism world.

• Swag.

• Domestic jobs - no more hiring in North America.

• Less magical realism/speculative fiction. Lunch/drinks meetings. Parties. Ghost writers remaining anon. BookTok.

• More people will be cut in 2025.  In tech, the cost of building AI models, the infrastructure (chips, energy costs, data centers) will continue to skyrocket and the only way to make Wall Street happy and not let your competitors win is to keep spending like drunken sailors while cutting people.  Companies have learned to cut in smaller quantities that if you add it all up it's a sizable amount but if you cut at different times and small numbers from each group, it doesn't seem like a big thing.  I expect more senior levels will be cut in 2025 (think mid-manager, directors, managing director levels) because these folks are generally more expensive due to seniority and title.  I also predict more lawsuits will emerge from folks that are let go because companies weaponizing annual reviews.  Every major tech company is trying to find ways to get rid of folks and pushing people out due to underperformance has always been good cover.  However, companies are broadening how they view lower performance and trying to pick up dirt from peer feedback as part of reviews.  Overall I expect more job cuts but also more litigation that will emerge

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IN: Extravagance

• Expensive experiences over expensive things. For example, Michelin star experiences, planning vacations/travels around a restaurant, NA pairings, Uber Blacks, group dinners, events. Locally sourced ingredients. Fermentation.

• Crispy cheese balls in Caesar salad (currently serving at both Corner Store and Upland).

• PDRs (Private Dining Rooms) that are chic and sexy.

• Excessive cocktail garnishes.

• Wellness-first hotels and members clubs. Doing mountain holidays in the summer (rather than just for ski season).

• Dinner and a show. FOH > BOH (let's bring the maitre'd back!). People caring about vibe, scene and experience more than the food. Legacy chains like Starbucks trying to be more like Sweetgreen. And millennial chains like Sweergreen trying to be more like Starbucks. (As in more mass.) Chefs crossing over into culture even more.

• Wall paneling and chrome.

ALSO IN:

• Check-in / check-out / basic guest communication processes will be completely digitized and automated, and staff will instead be used for surprise and delight and highly personable and personalized moments in the guest journey.

• Small Hotels, Inns and B&Bs. People are over the airbnb fees and cleaning up after yourself.

• Stay-cations and domestic travel. I think Americans will become persona non-grata once Trump takes office.

• More casual “trattoria, neighborhood style” restaurants that require months in advance reservations.

• Closures for veteran restaurants/cafes/mom and pop shops that have been doing it 20+ years; more business flocking to all the developer deals in Williamsburg and Greenpoint; more hospitality collabs with luxury retail brands (not one thing)

• "Sadly short menus, with little be desired- one standout ""instagrammable dish"" but a place that has vibes at 100.

• No phone policies in places . But in a tasteful cool way not like a members only frog club way. Looking at a place like Angelonis Club Madrid who currently has a no phone policy in place for NYE and it makes sense. bringing back a little chaos back to the industry as well instead of being so calculated and perfect to show online.

OUT:

• Restaurants and chefs having as much influence as they did in the last 10-20 years; restaurants in the "middle" closing.

• Less technique and chef-driven restaurants. Food reaching peak-cool.

• Anything too serious and low key. There is a resurgence of a need chaos and mysterious-ness in the industry. Recently LaLou in Brooklyn announced their closure soon and I think wine bar places like that that try to be on the educated side and very tasteful with food may be falling off. people want the grunge

• Orange wine

• Free stuff

• Boring conferences

• Chef-y bros, instagram shoppy shops, food brands that flying a little close to the sun (David Chang, Graza, Squrl)

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IN:

• Liquidity, IPOs (everyone is saying they're back), tariff watch, worrying about inflation / effects of tariffs, trying to predict Trump's business policies, trying to predict RFK Jr. and MAHA, Zyn competitors, business lunches

• Deal boom will be back. Not as aggressive as Fall 2020, but PE firms are hungry for exits.

• Bank consolidation; higher M&A in # of deals and volumes

• Surge of M&A across industry sectors with the Lina Khan’s activist tenure at the FTC over and Trump set to cut regulations generally.

OUT:

• Socially responsible investing

• ESG (Environmental, social, and governance) investing

• Any sort of employee engagement with the company or coworkers

• Saying you’re a sustainable company (also in other sectors)

• DEI. GPs and LPs will take a nod from Trump and reduce focus on diversity initiatives that have been put in place over the last ~five years.

• DEI initiatives in hiring are going to fade away as people have come to question the oppressor/oppressed narrative, and the political climate has changed.

• Responsible investing

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IN:

• The notion of celebrating “one’s own personal style” as a response to the quiet luxury.

• Great store experiences driving customer acquisition, profitability over units, diversified income streams (restaurants, membership clubs).

• Immersive retail; the living room/home as store.

• I think we'll see more 'guest' situations — designers, editors, per Jean Paul Gaultier, Moncler, Marc Jacobs at Vogue. It feels like a more elevated rebrand of the collab era, providing the same low commitment way of remixing and re-marketing an existing thing to an expanded audience. This will work really well for big brands, who will continue to play it safe for the sake of their bottom line, but who still need newness to generate buzz. Inviting in a guest designer or creative is a mutually beneficial solution, but allows them the freedom to easily switch it up if the partnership doesn't sell.

• "Brand" will make or break fashion companies (I'd say this is typically the case in fashion, but it's going to be more aggressive the next few years). Building any brand that is in the contemporary or higher price point will only succeed if they build an insane cult following. The low priced quick trend forward fast fashion brands will kill any brand that doesn't have a clear point of view or niche perspective. Brand, brand, brand.

• Actual potential customers treated better than influencers.

• Doing less better. Quality over quantity. I don't know why Jonathan Anderson is missing fashion week in London next year, but I would love to see the entire calendar slow down. We can't expect consumers to stop shopping fast fashion if the aspirational brands and houses are still cranking out new collections every 3 months.

OUT:

• Accessibility to high-end designer brands. It might be a function of both affordability with new costs of production/imports/whatever the F is going to happen with Asian vs. European vs. American tariffs etc. But it also is a function of high-end brands becoming so saturated in the market that they then become diluted. Knock-off brands or things that looks similar come at a lower price point (The Row totes are around $2k, and Coach’s Brooklyn is $500). Bigger brands are more selective in their assortment and either raise prices on “entry level” items (Louis Vuitton card case keychain up to over $300). For $300, the average fashion consumer will likely spend elsewhere or second-hand options. I think the big brands don’t want to be as commonly worn and collected, and the previous shoppers or new shoppers aren’t spending their money on high-end items anyways. This contrast will really shift the way big designer brands operate and I think they will suffer from it.

• Affiliate, I pray.

• I’m not sure Matthieu’s Chanel is going to do that well in stores, to be honest! Critically it’ll kill… but I need to see the non-competes from Bottega’s accessories designers before committing. It might be that RTW from Louise Trotter’s Bottega has a higher sell thru than Blazy’s Chanel but everyone will be too chickenshit to say it. (???)

• Quiet luxury.

• I know this sounds naive and trite, but assholes. It always gets around, who is mean, and whether it’s conscious or not that starts to influence who is invited to things, gets jobs, etc.

• Sustainability. (I'm not saying it's not important). But I think the rise of the Shiens and Temus is all the proof you need, that the average consumer, does not care about sustainability. And as long as profits are high, no corporation is going to do any meaningful efforts into sustainability unless government regulation gets involved, and in the U.S. I do not see that happening.

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IN:

• More AI, everywhere. On everything.

• A return to handwritten, paper tests (and potentially handwritten, timed in person assignments).

• Ivy League acceptance rates climbing and their average test score dropping as a result of the return of test mandatory admissions.

• A greater push towards Southern schools with more frat and sports culture.

• I think more students will take a gap year before going off to college. Given the rising costs and the new regime's plan to eliminate some critical primary financial aid sources (namely, the Parent PLUS and Grad PLUS loans), more students are likely to consider trade school, community college/2-year degrees, regional campuses of their state institutions, and other alternative pathways of least resistance to decent-paying jobs. The narrative has been shifting for a while and I think 2025 will be a major push toward more families considering the financial fit of an institution, not just selectivity for admission. For higher education, what I foresee being IN is making smarter financial choices as they relate to post-secondary opportunities. In education consulting (my specific industry within the higher education space), I predict fewer wealthy families will care about qualifications of whom they higher and, if they have the funds, they'll gravitate toward consultants who overcharge and overpromise, thinking that they're setting their students up for "success" (whatever that means). Rick Singer is back up and running a new company that he started while in prison, and he already has a slew of clients who are being groomed for the sole purpose of elite college admissions — his website his hilariously trashy and absurd, particularly his quotations about ethics. 2025 is going to be increasingly polarized in this space with the middle and lower income families leaning into the pathways listed in the first half of this response, and higher income families leaning into the latter.

• My industry is not glamorous fun or sexy by any means (I work in a high school as their librarian) but I do think that kids are the future etc etc and it is a very important job. AI use is so rampant and it feels like nothing can stop it. They're very persistent in getting around blocks and being able to cheat. If only they worked that hard on doing homework themselves!! I will have kids on their laptops blatantly say that they're ChatGPTing their essays. I'm not their teacher and I'm not a snitch, but I'm just like come on whyyyy. I think that despite this, creativity will be IN for the world of high school education. Teachers and staff are getting younger and younger and they can relate to the teens more and reach them in new ways. A kid could use some Tik Tok phrase and I will know what it means already. I think that appealing to their world and using online trends to our advantage will help bridge that gap between students and staff.

• I think we're seeing an increase in the wealthy international student population, and that despite Trump's inauguration, unless he does something really radical, this is going to keep increasing due to the UK being less and less appealing since brexit (higher tuition prices, lower acceptance rates, less open curriculums etc...)

• Folks to be EXTREMELY cautious about spending due to the potential for the elimination of a lot of federal funding. Most districts take in tens of thousands to millions of federal dollars which they then use to pay for many important and many times required services (everything from servicing students with special needs to purchasing textbooks and technology). Districts will be ROCKED if the federal DoEd is destroyed- regardless of where they’re located and how they are politically aligned. Alabama and Mississippi are both hugely dependent on these sources but so are California and New York.

OUT:

• We've had the same federal loan caps for higher education for almost two decades ($5500 for year one, $6500 for year two, and $7500 for years three and four, with a $31,000 lifetime cap). Contrary to popular belief, the student loan crisis is not a result of the Department of Ed offering these federal loans (those amounts won't even cover a meal plan, let alone housing or tuition or books or fees at most schools), it's the result of parents taking out the Parent PLUS loan (so maybe it will be good to abolish that option) and private student loans to cover tuition and whatnot. So what's on the way out? Parent PLUS loans, and the ability for most families with college-bound children to pay for most schools. Many families who don't qualify for lower interest rates for private student loans rely on those Parent PLUS loans (which are solely the parent's responsibility to repay), which I think will be the primary reason students and families will more readily consider those alternative pathways I mentioned as being IN for my industry.

• Calling the cops on student protesters

• One thing that I think will be OUT is apathy. You would think that people who work in education do it because they care. Maybe some, but for sure not everyone. I personally don't think being strict and uncaring has ever helped the kids and has just made them resentful towards school, adults, rules, etc. Our world now is much more "open" and people in general open up more and are more honest about their struggles, mental health, and hardships. This is good! I think that compassion is coming back. I don't get out of bed and go to work five days a week for 18 an hour for the money or glory. I do it so that I can connect with the kids and indirectly help them. If I make even one student smile or laugh that day, it was a success in my book.

• A lot of teachers ,lol. Pay that hasn’t remained competitive, the politicization of school boards, Republicans’ deep disdain for public schools and big push for vouchers and charter schools… we were already reaching a huge retirement inflection point in the next couple of years as teachers age/retire and are not being replaced by new teachers (see Florida’s current shortage). If you have kids in school and think their teacher is worthwhile, let the teacher know and, better yet, let their principal or somewhat at the district know.

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IN: Books

• Right wing books.

• Books about what went wrong with democrats, hyper-specific single ingredient cookbooks, romantasy.

• In-store retail shopping for books.

• I work in book publishing, and I'd guess two trends will emerge in publishing and consuming books: more titles on self-reliance (literal homesteading, starting a compost pile/garden/etc.) and philosophical, like conservative nationalism/isolationist foreign policy. Hachette just announced a new imprint, Basic Liberty, right after the election. Yuck, but also the masses must be asking for this.

ALSO IN:

• So many huge stars are going to Broadway. Almost every Broadway show this season has had a big name: George Clooney, Sadie Sink, Adam Driver, Jim Parsons, etc. I think we're in a bit of a television flop era and a theater renaissance. Lots of cool new theater popping up and I love to see it.

• Professional athletes as portals into shared American humanity transcendent of left/right frames. They’re too healthy in a rounded way; a manifestation of pluralism and hard work and competing to win: the best in America that “creatives” has stupidly ignored or thought they were better than.

• TikTok stars as the 'friend of' role in straight-to-streaming projects.

• Lara Verheijden nude calendars and public nudity on every day objects, calling people prudes, eating disorders (no longer under the guise of wellness/ fitness), blending in/self-expression fatigue, non-fiction and romantasy (audio)books, women watching live sports, Reddit, YouTube comment section (anonymous social media), online anonymity in general, unnatural hair colors, non-digital artwork like woodcutting, stamping, felt, beads - anything mixed media, long meandering songs/documentaries, UNIQLO.

• Big studios penning deals with "indie" or "arthouse" directors like Sean Baker or Coralie Fargeat — i.e. anyone with a distinct style and bold storytelling sensibilities — to replicate A24's cachet.

OUT:

• Bespoke, precious TV shows that speak to narrow experiences or identities. There isn't enough money to go around since the industry's contracted.

• Short-form media being taken seriously as a form of entertainment.

• Literature, fiction for adults, self-examination, staying informed/reading credible news, discourse/criticism, NPR, sensitivity, traditional education backgrounds, personalizing your political beliefs, Instagram, interviews/explaining yourself, validation from old institutions, phone addiction, Urban Outfitters.

• Feminism.

• Projects that bosses worry (correctly or not) will be perceived as "too woke".

• Celebrity EP attachments where the celebrity doesn’t bring something to the table besides their name to promote the project. Their production company needs to actually be capable of production services or they have to appear on camera.

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IN:

• Personality. And not the "be your own brand,” because we're all so fucking tired of that, but actual "I get what they're going for here and would like to be friends/enemies with this person" personality. I believe we are moving, for better and worse, towards big personality. Not the invented-in-a-lab venture capital/hospitality group personalities we've been saddled with for the last decade+ that conjure a perfect patron or founder and decide what that person would want. I see businesses with actual founders that say "this is what I fucking love and you better love it too." I see shops and restaurants that provoke strong feelings in our future; I want to love your store so much that I am vomitously giddy with excitement, or hate your shop so much that I loathe the very sight of your logo yet can't help but doom scroll your website. Make us feel again.

• Red light therapy. Seems to be all the rage within my 'wellness' friend circle in LA and a bunch of new startups entering the space, as well as more brick-and-mortar locations opening.

• Price increases. We’ve moved our factory from China to Vietnam to avoid tariffs, but consumer surveys from 2023 showed that we could increase prices so we are next year.

• Less packaging.

• Ongoing return of old vices - smoking, liquor, red meat, beef fats in cooking.

• There will be a boom in consumer investment into four-wall businesses. This trend has been emerging over the past few years, with new concepts in MedSpa(s), F&B, Vet Care getting serious rounds of funding. Traditional retail stands out as one of the few industries where AI/Robotics are unlikely to make an impact anytime soon or maybe ever. On a related note, this shift will likely bring a resurgence of retail jobs. As more people are laid off from traditional “email jobs,” many will seek to rediscover a sense of purpose in the physical world. These jobs are also becoming safer, as city officials seem to finally recognize the consequences of past "woke" experiments, such as defunding the police, turning a blind eye to shoplifting, and letting mentally-ill drug abusers roam the streets.

OUT:

• Venture money.

• Formulaic business models. I'm not even sure if business models is the right word, but it's early and I'm tired. It's a new world out there, and every year more people who didn't get the message are closing.

• Brands like Quince — these weird faceless luxury discount brands, marketing gimmicks, woke brands (it will NOT be like Trump’s first term).

• "Better for you."

• Moodboard style social pages for CPG companies. Already been on the way out, but it's totally done.

• Celebrity-backed beverage brands – especially alcohol.

• One fad I predict will be out for our industry next year is the trend of "automated" retail concepts that center store design around the automation itself. Brands like Kernel, Wonder, CafeX, and the Sweetgreen robot store are prime examples. Most of these brands lack hospitality to begin with, and watching robotic arms pass sauces from a shelf to a counter strips away the last shred of humanity that made them feel like hospitality businesses at all. What amazes me is how their leadership teams fail to understand the very basic concept of perceived value. A product is only as good as the way it makes people feel. Everyone knows that strawberries taste better when they’re hand-picked. Robots remove any degree of personalization and discretion to retail experiences, which is what gives it all the meaning.

• Clutter.

• Erewhon — it will never really be out but most cool/normal/local people in LA have stopped going there because the Tiktok-ification of the store has just gotten overwhelming (people walking around with tripods and ring lights, impossible to find parking etc.)

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Thank you everyone who contributed to this one. It was a blast, and I’m curious to see which predictions will manifest in 2025.