My friend invests $30,000 in pickleball courts amid sport’s hype, now faces declining business

I have witnessed several cases of people investing in trendy business ideas and ending up losing money or locking in capital with poor returns.

In one case, a friend of mine used to own a warehouse that he rented out steadily for VND40 million a month. However, after the last tenant left, he spent months unable to find a new one.

Seeing the hype around pickleball at the time, he thought it was a timely opportunity to convert the space into pickleball courts for rental. The sport was extremely popular then, and almost everyone was talking about it.

Initially, the courts performed quite well, especially on some weekends when bookings were full. But gradually, footfall and business began to decline. Customers increasingly booked only certain time slots each day, leaving the business mostly empty outside those periods.

At VND200,000 per hour, after accounting for electricity, maintenance, court upkeep, and staffing costs, the income was far lower than the previous warehouse rental, where he could earn tens of millions of dong per month with much less effort.

And as more courts opened and the early hype faded, my friend’s business is now operating at a modest level of activity, meaning it will take longer than expected to break even.

In another case, a younger acquaintance of mine bought a cart and supplies to sell stone-grilled sausages and hand-pounded lemon tea, only to quickly suffer his first business failure due to poor sales. Both products only saw brief demand during their social media hype. Once the trend died down, revenues plunged and were no longer enough to cover costs. The main winners were wholesalers supplying ingredients and materials.

Both stories highlight a key weakness of trend-based businesses. When a product or service becomes popular on the internet, people rush in to capitalize on the hype.

Within weeks or months, rising competition makes it difficult to raise prices, and operators may even have to lower prices or offer discounts just to attract customers. At that point, any early advantage quickly disappears.

Most people planning such businesses only see the short-term success while ignoring the hidden downside once the market becomes saturated.

Trend-based businesses can make a lot of money, but only if you are the one leading the trend. If you are following it, you need to ask: what makes you different enough to survive after the hype cools?

*This opinion was submitted by a reader and translated into English. Readers’ views are personal and do not necessarily match Read’ viewpoints.