Now, this article contains graphs and statistics. Not the usual thing for this blog, but I find it relevant since sometimes numbers reveal realities--- and this is great.
Google Trends is a free tool that analyses the popularity of Google search queries across different regions. You can type any term and see how its popularity changed over time, and compare it to any other term.
I thought it would be interesting to search for the term "Vegan Leather", since Google searches can be thought of as a good indicator of something's true popularity. I expected the term's search popularity to have grown throughout time, but I was utterly surprised by the huge, consistent growth the term had since 2004. Below is a screenshot of a graph showing how the term's popularity went from nothing to where it is right now (worldwide):
Rises are common in most terms, and generally represent the holiday shopping season (November or December). The number "100" means the peak popularity of a term. The highest peak for the search "Vegan Leather" was November of 2021. Let's just wait for the next holiday season!
This graph indicates that the term "Vegan Leather" reached its peak popularity (so far) in the week of November 21st to November 27th of 2021.
Here is the graph for the search of the term for the last 5 years. Though not as steep as the graph that measured the term's popularity growth since 2004, it still reveals a promising and fast-paced popularity increase. We can see that its starting and lowest point is 23. The difference between 100 (the peak) and 23 is 77. That shows the popularity for the term increased by 77% in the last 5 years, worldwide. In United States, the starting and lowest point is 18, making the popularity increase in the last 5 years 82%.
I then thought it would be interesting to compare it to the search of "Genuine Leather". Did the search of both terms increase equally, or were people searching for vegan leather in lieu of genuine leather?
"These are a lot of numbers and graphs to show that vegan leather, that can be any non-animal substitute for leather, is on the rise. The word 'vegan' is no longer a rarity, nor is the concept of not wanting to wear animals"
In the graph below, you can see how the search for "Genuine Leather" (shown in red) has started out with much more popularity than the search "Vegan Leather" (shown in blue). However, it is inspiring to see how the popularity for the term "Vegan Leather" increased so much and caught up with the relative popularity of the term "Genuine Leather".
This graph shows the week of the highest peak of the term "Vegan Leather" in comparison to the term "Genuine Leather" in the United States. We can see that the relative popularity for "Vegan Leather" is 9 points higher than the relative popularity for animal leather. This indicates that while the popularity for vegan leather is going up, the popularity for genuine leather is going down.
These are a lot of numbers and graphs to show that vegan leather, that can be any non-animal substitute for leather, is on the rise. The word "vegan" is no longer a rarity, nor is the concept of not wanting to wear animals. To me, this shows progress in the minds of people, it shows how every day being vegan is easier and the concept of not harming animals is more accepted. Even if the person googling it was a non-vegan family member searching to gift her vegan niece a bag she could wear, the non-vegan family member understood the concept and knew how to google it, showing a huge difference from how it used to be before if someone didn't want to wear leather. It also suggests how the market and consumption for vegan alternatives is on the rise.
Let's keep on doing what we are doing, for the animals, because it is working.
Cheers to progress!!
-Maggie Stilman
Founder, Editor & Writer