Dubai Chocolate and Labubus: How Microtrends are Weakening the US Economy

This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Brown chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.

In the last few months, if you’ve scrolled on Tiktok or gone out in public, chances are you’ve probably spotted the infamous microtrend, the Labubu. Yet, what once was the ever-dominant craze everywhere you looked, is beginning to lose its popularity and even cease to be used. Many people are turning to Tiktok, detailing how they have “retired” their Labubus either to storage or to a landfill. This isn’t a unique case; many trends within the last few years have only influence US popular culture for a few months at most. Trendy products quickly go out of style, contributing to a larger municipal waste and an inverse impact on the country’s sustainability efforts. With trend lifetimes becoming shorter and shorter, how can we expect the nation’s economy to react? We must ask ourselves, are trends truly worth it?

Difficulties in Demand Forecasting

Due to the fast nature of trends within the decade, many retailers are struggling to forecast demand. They are unsure how much the public will be willing to buy these goods at certain prices. This can lead to an overproduction or scarcity in stock, forcing businesses to deal with either a distended inventory or lack of sales due to scarcity of the item.

Supply Chain Disruptions

As seen during the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, a secondary repercussion that stems from demand forecasting hindrances is a “bullwhip effect,” where simple shifts in purchases are boosted, moving up the supply chain, further exaggerating production and order batching. This effect leads to shifts within individual production possibility curves, where items that are seen as easier to produce, given they’ll generate a greater demand, compared to another item, are given priority. This can cause not only an overinflation in stock of one good, but scarcities in other items that national economies produce, often leading to price surges and difficulty acquiring certain goods.

Debt Due to Inflation

As microtrends can stimulate the economy within a short-term timeline, these increased sales cause the market to become more volatile and unpredictable, leading to inflationary pressures, as producers struggle to handle changes to demand. As supply chains are strained and companies struggle to meet reasonable production based on this demand, companies often raise prices in the wake of scarcity, leading to inflation. Not only is this bad for the economy and overall pricing, but inflation can also be expected to lead to individual debt, proving that microtrends not only hurt the economy at a large scale, but can be bad for our wallets as well.

While trends such as the Labubu and Dubai Chocolate have been fun, we have to begin asking ourselves if we can see a trend being sustainable and long-term before we begin to participate in them. Not only should we begin investing greater efforts into sustainability not only for the sake of the economy, but the environment, as well, but we should also be looking into trends, such as underconsumption, as a way to offset our chronic overuse in the age of microtrends. A great way to get started is by checking out: is underconsumption trending? 13 things I’m not buying in 2025.