Every product that goes viral goes through similar phases: a quiet start with few sales, an acceleration phase where growth starts drawing attention, the popularity peak where everyone is already selling it, and then saturation, when competition drives down the margin for whoever arrived last. The secret of those who profit most from a viral product is not luck — it is entering during the acceleration phase, not at the peak.
The problem is that, looking only at the TikTok feed, it is almost impossible to tell these phases apart by eye. When a product already appears repeatedly in your "For You" feed, it has very likely already passed the acceleration phase and is entering or already at the peak — which means dozens of other shops have already noticed the same thing you have.
The most reliable signs that a product is in the acceleration phase, still with room for opportunity, include: consistent and rising percentage growth over several weeks in a row (not an isolated one-day spike, which is usually rumor or a one-off paid-media action); genuinely rising sales volume, not just the percentage; and a number of shops selling that product still relatively low compared with the demand potential that the growth data suggests.
A recommended practice is to track growth across multiple time windows at once — 7, 30 and 90 days, for example. A product that grows consistently across all three windows, with stronger acceleration in the last 7 days compared with the previous 30, is a much stronger signal of a real trend than a product that only had a recent isolated spike with no history of sustained growth before.
Monitoring this manually, product by product, is unfeasible at scale. Automating that reading with growth alerts is what lets you act during the acceleration phase, and not chase after the product once it has already become old news.
Track product growth across multiple time windows on Vellum Lens and anticipate the next viral wave.
