The top trend of this summer? It has to be those fidget spinners that everyone from your nephew to your stressed out colleague is using. But just how did fidget spinners come to be?

At WGSN we’ve been tracking the trend two years out since 2015 with our lifestyle report called Brass Decorative Accessories, which looked at the importance of more play in our daily lives.

In 2016, this evolved with our new report called Bored is the new Black, which explored looking at boredom differently and the creativity that comes from mindful wandering. Fidget toys play into this, as they offer up a sense of playtime and being bored but also gently stimulated (the way you might have been by a board game in the past).

This culminated in our trend alert that we published earlier this year, calling out fidget toys specifically. That’s what is interesting about trends, they are often just a gentle moving of the needle forward from the trends we’ve seen before, and at WGSN we have the experts who can track trend growth and the moment at which a trend will land with the public (including that fidget spinner on your desk right now).

Love this? Then you’ll love Our brand new whitepaper ‘The Anatomy of a Trend’ , which focuses on dissecting trends – demonstrating how they initially evolve, how we separate micro trends from macro trends and when and how your business should incorporate them in your business strategy.

Download it here to find out about how key trends go from emerging to everywhere.