Sometimes a great product will be a temporary sale. Once everyone has the product they don't need to buy more and you will have to shift to a new product. However, don't be afraid to ride that wave. Social media and the internet can be a great source for helping you find a great product that will sell, if only for a short period of time.
When the COVID pandemic hit, I had been selling embroidered kitchen towels in a few local stores. One store manager asked me if I could make him and his employees cloth facemasks. This was all we knew that could help with the virus spreading at this time. I had no idea how to make a mask, but I said I could and figured it out. Then I made some for my family. I posted on social media that I was making masks and if anyone wanted any I would be happy to make them. Orders started coming in. The manager of the store where I made the masks for asked if I would make some for him to sell to customers. Then another store asked if I would make some for their customers. I became a little "sweat shop" sewing into the late night hours each day making masks. I did this for 3+ months. Each morning I would make my rounds delivering to the stores, then go to the fabric store (stand in line outside for an hour plus) and buy more fabric, then home for cutting and sewing. The next day I would repeat my routine. I made a ton of money making masks.
Eventually people began to learn to deal with the virus in other ways. The virus mutated and became not as serious and life moved on, mask free. I rode that wave though, as many others did, and was able to make some money that we wouldn't have had if I had told that first store manager no.
Waves can be big or small, wide or skinny. It can have a huge rise and then a hard crash. Often you can identify when a product will have a short life span. Preparing for its crash is as important as identifying that this is going to be a temporary moneymaker.
One way to prepare for its crash is to not keep a lot of inventory. Identify your sales right away and plan for its rise by increasing your inventory but only keep enough on hand that you will sell in a short amount of time. Items that take a lot of time to prepare may be harder to judge when that crash will happen. The trick is to not end up with a lot of inventory that you can't sell.
Look for clues that your sales may begin to slide. If you are selling in craft shows or similar markets you might see that your product is beginning to slide down hill is when other crafters begin making similar items. You will see your product begin to flood the internet, shows, and on sites like Etsy. If the prices become too competitive then you will begin having a more difficult time selling. If you have a large following that are loyal and your sales continues to increase then you haven't hit the crest of the wave. Once you begin losing sales, it is time to start looking for the next big thing.
Managing your money can also help with the crash. If you manage your sales so that you don't have a lot of extra inventory and that you keep a bit of money to help you move on to the next product you can avoid crashing and having nothing to help you with the next idea.
We have found ourselves in that situation before where we owned a business that was unique in our area. Back in the early 2000s we started an "Ebay drop shop". People would bring us their items and we would sell them on Ebay for them. We kept a commission and paid them the remainder of the sale. It was a HIT! We were one of the first on the East Coast. We were in the newspaper and had a ton of business. But it all went away quickly. We rode the wave. Others copied us. Larger companies franchised across the nation. Eventually, with our competition, and their ability to move product quicker, we shut down. We had so much business that we couldn't keep up. But every bit of money we made had to go to our household bills. We had no money to expand, hire other helpers, or get into a bigger space. When we shut down, we had no money to start something else. We rode the wave but crashed on the beach hard and without anything to show from it, other than our framed newspaper article. If we had been able to manage our income better and had savings for the business we would have been able to expand and perhaps evolve out of Ebay when other avenues for selling items popped up.
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