Trend In 2022, reliability has never been sexier. By CLARE If you’re running a business, it’s hardly front- company selling bidet attachments for BRODY page news that the global supply chain is a toilets, reported a ten-fold increase in sales. hot mess. Covid toppled the first in a line of dominoes stretching around the planet, the No replacements for normal stock? Get last one landing with a thunk on an empty crafty. Baking equipment experienced a shelf somewhere in Milwaukee. Outbreaks, boom at the beginning of the pandemic, labor issues, and uneven demand have trumpeting the start of a larger DIY effectively tied the supply chain into a knot. revolution. Sales for baking cookbooks rose by 42% from October 2020 to And now, after nearly two years of October 2021. And when consumers aren’t being told to wait and keep waiting, learning to do new things themselves, consumers are fed up. Companies have they’re leaning into the craftiness of tried to maintain their loyalty by offering others, shopping small in peer-to-peer transparency, with website banners marketplaces like Etsy. Investors seem announcing longer delivery times. But to believe it will last, if Etsy’s strong stock just when things began to improve—and performance is any indication. products started reappearing on shelves— they started breaking bad again. Since the end of 2020, the index of global supply chain disruptions has been on a steady rise for the Eurozone and US. 2Companies and brands looking to grow Nimble businesses can even during times of adversity need to generate the same buzz abandon the normal course of business and and impact on their go over, under, and around. In other words, bottom lines—by meeting follow the lead of creative consumers. crafty customers Faced with toilet-paper shortages in March halfway and positioning 2020, Americans turned to an unlikely (at themselves at the least for Americans) solution: the bidet. intersection of need and At the peak of the shortage, TUSHY, a supply. 9 BUSINESS & GROWTH TRENDS 2022 OGILVY GROWTH & INNOVATION