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Not everything that is new, technologically advanced or more refined turns out to be cool - we think that revivals are always very cool, for example - that's why nowadays the profession of "cool hunter" has become more and more widespread. These figures are sought-after by fashion houses, tech and design companies and have multiplied exponentially since the 90s. These professionals generally come from the humanities or the world of communication and are usually between 20 and 40 years old. We are talking of the community of creative people interested in the future and shaping the future of consumer goods.
Today with all the information that we receive we are less and less willing to receive the traditional messages offered by the media and advertising. That's where cool hunters come into play: on a global basis they listen to young people and try to understand their needs in order to inform companies on new trends and innovative ideas projected into the future.
Their business model is mostly personal, but it fits into a triangular marketing system that you will probably be familiar with. At the top of the triangle are innovators, representing 2 to 3 percent of the population. Below them are cool hunters, who we estimate are about 17 percent; they have the ability to collect the ideas that innovators are developing and claim them as their own. Below them are the early adopters (or influencers if you want), whose number is difficult to estimate, but they can be considered a sort of layer above the mainstream, which is about 80%. The latter take what the cool hunters select, to wear it, use it, post it online and, above all, make it more appealing to mass consumption. And that's the moment when the consumer takes it and uses it until he eventually separates from it.
But how does this new profession work and especially how does a cool hunter operates? For fashion and art, cool hunters collaborate directly or write for dedicated magazines which serve as portfolio of "ideas" ready to be "caught" by designers and artists. Sometimes designers and companies also draw from the same repertoire, but what is their procedure?
If we take the example of decor (non vintage decor), the case of the Danish company Flying Tiger is quite curious. Since 1995 this brand sells cheap objects which can be included in three categories: things you need, things you dream of and things that you didn't know existed. The company's founder, Lennart Lajboschitz, tells us his secret: "I observe, I travel, I look at young people: so I can innovate". The shopping experience he invented is very similar to that of vintage shopping where you get lost in a sort of treasure hunt that is enriching regardless of the product you end up buying or not.
Doing coolhunting today means searching for originality, rejecting bad copies and breaking through the superfluous. A cool hunter will therefore not miss the best vintage markets in the world: he will travel between the stands of Les Puces de Saint-Ouen in Paris, the Mercado de San Telmo in Buenos Aires, he will go to Brimfield and regularly visit his city's thrift shops. However his task will not be to bring home home authentic objects, but mainly to observe those who visit vintage shops, fairs and markets - he might have spied on you as well - And if he really wants to speak the language of today, he will not miss vintage shops' Instagram accounts around the world and will become a regular visitor to online marketplaces like ours.
Curiosity, audacity and the courage to avoid asking always the same questions are the requirements of every cool hunter and paradoxically also those that distinguish fans of vintage furniture. Let's rethink our shopping then and look for new trends.
