Cocooning
Helping your customers build a sanctuary allows them to feel right at home.
Where we have regained freedom and are bound by fewer restrictions, families are again eagerly exploring their local neighbourhoods and revisiting their favourite beaches, playgrounds and cafes.
For those now working from home, where once it felt like we spent much of our day stuck in traffic, we now have more time to spend close to where we love.
This shift has brought a new-found appreciation of the home and the rise of cocooning – the practice of spending leisure time at home in preference to going out. It came from the natural desire to shield ourselves from the health risks out in public areas as the pandemic unfolded. During all of the troubling developments, home was and still feels like a place that is safe.
Some workers relished the opportunity to ditch the commute to work from their ‘safe space’ and will want to keep doing so. This means the trend of spending more time at home is only likely to grow.
In turn, the rise of cocooning will shift how your customers buy your products, and could drive exciting new opportunities for your business.
Embracing the cocooning trend
The cocooning trend is visible in the growing popularity of self-sufficiency at home – everything from baking your own sourdough bread to starting a vegetable patch has entered the local lexicon. Households are storing higher quantities of staple foods, medical supplies, cleaning and personal hygiene products, all to ensure their cosy cocoon is safe and well-stocked.
If you have a business offering products for the home, this highlights the chance to help your customers set up their sanctuary, whether that’s home renovation products and advice, household staples, or even modern home office equipment.
Changing how we use our homes
Over the longer horizon, cocooning could see the physical fabric of Australian houses change. Larger residences with more generous office spaces and home gyms could be in high demand, while having lots of room to move in a country house might trump the location benefits of small inner-city pads.
If you’re a business supplying home goods, it’s a long-term trend to watch. Enabling customers to be more productive, safe and comfortable at the place they love best is an emerging avenue where small businesses can help.
Consider your customer
Can you enable your customers to be more self-sufficient by preparing meals from your ingredients, assembling your products, or teaching themselves via your courses from the comfort of home?
How can you help your customers make their home offices ergonomic and safe?
As customer expectations for home delivery grow, can you impress them with smaller, more precise delivery windows and faster turnaround?
Consider your business
What are the benefits to local foot traffic if more of your customers work from home?
How can you make your premises a sanctuary away from home and help your customers feel safe and comfortable?
Can you design new outreach or in-home services to bring your products and services to your customer?
Tips
- Promote existing services that might help customers to cocoon and be more self-sufficient.
- Trial new ways for customers to access your products at home.
- Keep an eye on changes to foot traffic and consider what opening hours suit the changing times.
- Consider adapting existing products so that customers can DIY if they wish.
Specialising in Xero bookkeeping, Notch Above are bookkeepers that offer Xero setup, as well as training and ongoing support. Call us Australia-wide on 1300 015 130.
Source: Xero
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