There goes the Crochead that I see each morning
Hey Snackers,
Hope you're hungry: We're on Day 2 of spotlighting four of the biggest business trends of 2020. Yesterday, we covered the House Hype. Today, we're covering the comfiest trend of them all.
Before we dive in: Stocks closed at record highs yesterday after President Trump signed the $900B Covid-19 relief bill (aka: Stimulus #2). Adults making under $75K would receive $600 checks (aka: half of Stimulus #1) — but the House just shipped Trump's request to increase that to $2K. Now it's all up to the Senate.
Handmade fuzzy socks FTW... In a year of so much fear and uncertainty, we turned to familiar creature comforts to help us feel a little more at ease. Companies that were previously forgotten (or even ridiculed), shockingly rose up from the Wall Street shadows as relevant standouts:
Etsy was a cultural punchline in 2019 — now it's a Wall Street darling with the second best-performing S&P 500 stock of the year. It was the best performing S&P stock, until Tesla was added to the index in December (womp):
Crocs was famously known as the ugly shoe brand — then it had its 2020 Croc-star moment, riding a wave of star-studded collabs. While US footwear sales were down 20% this year, Crocs sales were up 48%, according to an analyst.
Campbell Soup also made a shocking comeback in 2020: Campbell's canned soup sales grew after having fallen for nearly nine years straight. Pantry-staples like Campbell's became a hot commodity around the same time that TP disappeared (#memories).
Comfy is the new cool... Moisturizer is the new bronzer, sweats are the new khakis, and craftmade is the new designer. The underlying 2020 trend: affordable comfort is the cool factor. With 10.7M Americans still unemployed and vaccines that won't be widely available until this summer, "comfort is king" could trend well into 2021.
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Disclosure: Authors of this Snacks own shares of Tesla, JPMorgan Chase, and Amazon
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