How CPG Experts Turn Trends Into 600+ Popular Retail Products

With over 600 brands and manufacturers on their partner roster, The Barcode Group is a major force within the U.S. consumer packaged goods (CPG) space. If you’ve ever shopped at Target, Walmart, Amazon, Costco, Kroger, or CVS—among other national retailers—you’ve likely encountered, and enjoyed, a product placed on the shelf by The Barcode Group.

“We focus on helping small to medium size suppliers who are just starting out in the CPG industry and don’t have the expertise, experience, or know-how to pull all of this together into one cohesive retail strategy,” said Bethany Davis, president at The Barcode Group. “We’re here to be a help.”

Davis and her team help brands and retailers in several ways, including finding the right product fit for various stores and even acting as an external research team for companies that don’t have their own access to market and trend data.

And data really is at the heart of everything that Davis and team focus on at The Barcode Group—from gathering metrics about what consumers want in the next iteration of a product to watching what’s trending on social media.

Relationships and community in retail

“When you’re growing online rather than in retail, it’s a lot about the community you build around your products and brand,” said Davis. “When you’re on the shelf at a retailer, it becomes about whether you can drive people to pick up your product. And that’s difficult to do if you don’t have the community, brand presence, and awareness behind you.”

When a brand partners with The Barcode Group, they get support in every stage of the go-to-retail process—from getting introductions to retailers to strategically growing sales once products are on shelves.

“It’s one thing to make an amazing product and it’s another thing to figure out how to win it in retail,” said Davis. “We help suppliers get in contact with a retailer, get a meeting, prepare for that meeting, get the sales and data story together, get on the shelf, and run operationally and grow once they’re in the retailer.”

The Barcode Group connects with CPG brands in several ways, often through direct referrals.

“We have a lot of relationships where people recommend us to brands,” said Davis. “I’d say that’s how 95% of our suppliers come to us and how our partnerships start.”

But The Barcode Group’s insights team also takes a proactive approach to finding the next big product trend.

“We look at what’s trending online,” said Davis. “What do we see on TikTok Shop? What do we see in the market? What’s on Amazon? What’s growing and not in retail yet, and where do we see that really filling a white space that we know exists? We’ll go after those brands and work on those partnerships as well.”

CPG trend tracking with Exploding Topics

The Barcode Group team keeps its market research focus fixed firmly forward—what’s happening right now and what’s about to take the CPG market by storm. But they have to be careful not to let their own social media algorithms affect the data they gather for reports and customers.

“We’re very hard to trust in terms of what we see on social media and online. Our algorithms know we’re CPG people! We get a very broad assortment of what’s out there,” said Davis.

“When you have those moments where everything clicks and you can validate a thought you’ve had, that’s the moment when you’re like okay, there’s something here—it’s not just me or my algorithm. It’s not just this one piece, it’s all of it coming together in this ecosystem to say it’s a valid trend.”

Exploding Topics is one of the team’s go-to tools for both finding and validating CPG trends.

“Exploding Topics really fills a gap for us. We didn’t have the capability before to be able to say what’s trending right now and what consumers are looking for right now,” said Sarah Martin, an insights analyst at The Barcode Group.

The team evaluated several trend data tools before settling on Exploding Topics.

“Exploding Topics was the one that was easiest to use, and the best comprehensive look at the total market, and was something the team could leverage easily,” said Davis. “After the first six months [the team was] still using it, we were getting more requests, and use was escalating instead of declining. At that point, it was a pretty no-brainer opportunity for us.”

Martin uses the full capabilities of her Exploding Topics Pro account, but she has two favorite tools: the Trending Products database and Meta Trends.

“I do a monthly trend recap, and I stick with the Meta Trends data for that report. I’ll pick five topics and a few trends under each, then highlight key individual trends…I really like the Trending Products report too. The organization is really nice—you can go into a category, choose how big you want the search volume to be, and over what period of time." said Martin. “I like that it takes away the guesswork that you might have just by looking at your For You page on TikTok…every time I’m working on a new research project, I go and look at Exploding Topics.”

All of Martin’s top data points go into a regular report she shares with key clients and other stakeholders.

“The feedback I get from our clients and our sales team is that these are the trends and insights they want to see,” said Martin. “Exploding Topics is definitely something that’s become a regular part of my routine as I work on secondary research.”

Success on the retail shelf

Positive feedback isn’t the only way Martin and her team know that Exploding Topics data is making a good impact within The Barcode Group, either. They can see the benefit directly on retailers’ changing shelves.

“There was a sales member on our team who looked at the mullein leaf trend on one of my monthly reports,” said Martin. “He found a brand performing really well in that space, got in contact with them, and had good conversations.”

Those initial conversations ultimately led to Walmart buyers taking a look at the mullein leaf product.

“That was a really cool thing that started from an Exploding Topics report,” said Martin. “There was another instance where a sales team member told me about a current haircare client who incorporated batana oil into their products based off of Exploding Topics data that I shared. Those products are currently on a shelf and they’re creating a lot of buzz.”

Seeing a trend report turn into a real product is incredibly rewarding for everyone involved in the process.

"The feeling of getting a product on a shelf and seeing it on a shelf because you know you were able to shepherd that along, that's a feeling that's hard to describe to people," said Davis. "But it's absolutely why we do what we do."

But even if a trend update doesn’t turn into a meeting with a retail buyer, it’s still a valuable data point for The Barcode Group team.

“It’s making our team more aware of what’s happening in the industry in a trend-forward way,” said Bollweg. “It’s a very valuable thing for the company.”

The Barcode Group's 5 tips for using trending topics

The Barcode Group’s successful ability to turn exploding trends into real retail products is impressive—and you can apply their strategies to your own industry, too. Start with these X recommendations from Martin and Bollweg:

1. Subscribe to the Exploding Topics newsletter

The basic version of the Exploding Topics newsletter is free, while the Pro version gives subscribers advance access to topics with a great trend forecast.

“Definitely make sure you subscribe to the weekly emails. I read them every single week and incorporate them into my reports,” said Martin.

2. Explore different Meta Trends

“There are really great summaries for the entire trend,” said Martin. “You can dive deeper into a specific item or brand and see how many people have looked for it in the past few months or years.”

3. Turn on the future forecast

“I highly recommend getting the future forecast,” said Martin. “Otherwise, something may look like it’s teetering off at the end (of the graph).”

4. Discuss your findings

One of the reasons that Exploding Topics works so well for The Barcode Group team is that they share their findings—the data doesn’t live in a silo. And Martin’s weekly reports have become so popular that colleagues reach out to ask when the next edition will land in their inboxes.

“I love that people anticipate it and want this information,” said Bollweg. “And it reminds them that [our team] exists!”

5. Keep exploring trends

“Definitely make sure you stay in Exploding Topics,” said Martin. “It’s updated frequently; you have to be consistent with how you’re looking at it."

You can learn more about The Barcode Group's latest CPG insights by browsing their free reports—or jump right in to Exploding Topics and start conducting your own research with their favorite tools! Sign up for a free Exploding Topics Pro trial to get full access to our trend database, Meta Trends, forecasts, the Pro newsletter and more features used by the experts at The Barcode Group.