Welcome to the This Is The North Podcast, your source of transformative conversations. An intentional challenge to the systems holding back the North of England. Hosted by Alison Dunn MBE, an award-winning charity chief executive and former solicitor. This podcast is supported by the Society Matters Foundation and is dedicated to curating and sharing knowledge, powering the change we need for a more equal and inclusive society.
In this episode, Alison is joined by Jo Feeley, founder and Chief Executive of Trend Bible, the Newcastle-based agency that forecasts the future of life at home for some of the world's biggest brands. Jo grew up in a tiny village outside Hexham, trained in fashion at Kingston, flew to New York on her student grant and walked out of an interview at American Eagle Outfitters with a job, and was Head of Trends at Tesco before setting up on her own. She has spent 26 years in the field and recently published her first book, Trend Leader.
The conversation starts with what trend forecasting actually is. Jo calls it a field of imagination: part behavioural science, understanding what shifts people's mindset enough to change how they live, and part creative act, imagining a future well enough that a company can plan for it.
Then Alison raises the Stanley cup, which she expected to be a fad and which is still everywhere. Jo has seen fads last a decade. She ladders up from the cup to the hydration trend behind it, the move away from plastic, and a generation that now expresses identity through the visible things it carries. She also describes the companies that pay for a forecast, decide not to act on it, and call her back twelve months later once a competitor has moved.
The heart of the episode is the phrase on the wall of Trend Bible's office: Shoreditch to Shields Road. A trend is only mass market once 70 per cent of the population has adopted it. Jo's competitors in Shoreditch watch the front end of that journey. She needs to see it reach the shelf in Morrisons in Byker. The same logic keeps bias out of her forecasts: instinct is a mirror of your own experience, so every report starts with a panel of people with lived experience of the subject.
Jo is also clear-eyed about the North East. The self-sufficiency narrative risks making the region inward-looking, and every success she has had came from reaching out: her first pitch was in Australia, her first sales in America. In the quickfire round she names the next home trend and explains why she thinks the AI hype train is overselling how much will change in two years.
Timestamps:
00:00 Big ideas can come from anywhere
07:01 Trend forecasting is a field of imagination
11:41 Why a fad can last a decade
18:40 What the Stanley cup says about identity
21:27 Vinted, Shein and the end of owning things
23:37 From rural Hexham to fashion school
26:52 Moving to New York
32:56 Shoreditch to Shields Road
35:46 Instinct is a mirror
40:20 The North's strength is in reaching outward
42:34 The next home trend
44:40 The AI hype train
When Jo left London, people asked her how many trends start in Newcastle. A trend that starts in Shoreditch and stays there is a niche. The future is the one that reaches Shields Road, and Jo chose to watch for it from here.
Host: Alison Dunn
Guest: Jo Feeley
This podcast is produced by Purpose Made.
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