This article presents the history of new goods in the eighteenth century as a part of the broader history of invention and industrialization. It focuses on product innovation in manufactured commodities as this engages with economic, technological and cultural theories. Recent theories of consumer demand are applied to the invention of commodities in the eighteenth century; special attention is given to the process of imitation in product innovation. The theoretical framework for imitation can be found in evolutionary theories of memetic transmission, in archaeological theories of skeuomorphous, and in eighteenth-century theories of taste and aesthetics. Inventors, projectors, economic policy makers, and commercial and economic writers of the period dwelt upon the invention of new British products. The emulative, imitative context for their invention made British consumer goods the distinctive modern alternatives to earlier Asian and European luxuries.

The rise of the British cotton industry and its central place in the industrial revolution was based in the global trade in luxury goods. This luxury goods trade generated the search for quality consumer goods; the quality of products dominated the priorities of manufacturers and inventors. The Asian trade in export ware provided models of production and distribution and the institutions for making markets for cottons as well as other quality consumer goods. The challenge posed by India was not its cheap labour, but the quality of its products.