If a trend is even starting to form, there's a good chance that Martha Stewart will want it for her business.
In the last year, the 81-year-old home lifestyle entrepreneur got seriously into NFTs. Along with launching an NFT boutique on her website, Stewart turned over 100 images from years of Thanksgiving photo shoots for "Martha Stewart Living" into online images that fans can buy as NFTs — from the overflowing leftover turkey sandwich to a horn of plenty given a modern, stylish spin.
The NFT trend later peaked and, as any celeb or would-be celeb seemed to come up with their own version, interest started waning. While there were over 225,000 NFT sales in September 2021, that number fell to 19,000 by May 2022.
Pumpkin Spice-Flavored CBD?
One trend that has not been going down is CBD — one of the active ingredients in the cannabis, cannabidiol has some of the plant's relaxation-inducing properties but lacks THC content and so cannot cause a high.
As a result, it has become extremely popular in everything from oil to food and makeup. The American CBD market was worth $12.8 billion in 2021 and is expected to grow with a CAGR rate of 21.7% by 2028.
In some sense, it has become a generation's snake oil as it is often marketed as being able to cure everything from headaches to depression.
Stewart first launched a line of CBD gummies in partnership with Canadian marijuana producer Canopy Growth (CGC) in 2020. Over the next two years, she would expand the line with different flavors as well as adding other CBD-infused products like skincare.
Canopy Growth/TS
The gummies, which sell for $34.99 for a pack of 30, currently come in flavors such as citrus and berry medley. And as the fall looms and pumpkin spice mania ramps up, Martha Stewart CBD announced that it would be launching a new pumpkin spice flavor.
They, too, will sell in packs of 30 on marthastewartcbd.com. Each gummy has 10 milligrams of active CBD.
"The Pumpkin Spice flavor signifies the beginning of the fall season and I wanted to capture this delicious moment with our CBD gummies," Martha Stewart said in a statement. "It's always important and a pleasure to expand our offerings and continue to make CBD convenient and tasty to enjoy, every day."
Are CBD Gummies a Lucrative Business?
The gummies tap into several trends at once — along with the growing demand for CBD, it seems like brands start peddling pumpkin spice products earlier and earlier every year.
Food research firm Tastewise told Fast Company that there was a 45% rise in consumer interest in pumpkin spice products between October 2019 and October 2020 as well as a 221% rise in its appearance on menus during the same time period while business intelligence company Morning Consult found that 25% of Americans feel that late August is the perfect time to start seeing pumpkin spice products.
CBD, meanwhile, has long been a way for mainstream brands to tap into loosening attitudes toward cannabis without having to navigate the convoluted state-by-state web of actually selling it as marijuana, which is currently illegal at the federal level.
"Huge companies have been hesitant to embrace CBD as its initially 'Wild West' market goes through growing pains," CBD company Sunday Stories founder Mike Sill wrote for Forbes. "But once the regulatory landscape clears and stabilizes, I believe many corporate giants will look to diversify their product lines with CBD and add brand-new products that open avenues of growth."
