Summary

• Promotional strategy is key to brand positioning, with the end goal being to introduce your product to customers and convince them to buy it. 
• In the digital age, businesses can leverage more platforms than ever to help drive their promotional strategy, from TikTok to email. 
• Getting your promotional strategy right will result in better margins, reduced excess inventory, lower markdowns and increased market share.
• Retailers can enhance their strategy through actions such as analyzing past performance, forecasting demand by calendaring in key promotional periods and aligning stock and visual merchandising with promotional materials.
• MANGO’s growth has been supported by its focus on using data to determine the right products for each market as well as guide its pricing policies and discounting decisions.
• EDITED’s retail analytics software can help devise and execute the ultimate promotional strategy season after season with tools such as visual merchandising tracking, discounting analysis and market analytics, which house over 12 years of data and 4bn SKUs.

What is Promotional Strategy and why is it so Important?

Promotional strategy lies at the heart of discounting decisions, product launches and retail campaigns, making it integral to driving demand for your product. It is key to brand positioning and tapping into your target market, with the end goal being to introduce your product to customers and convince them to buy it. In the digital age, businesses can leverage more platforms than ever to help drive their promotional strategy, from TikTok to email. 

What are the Benefits of Data-Backed Promotional Planning?

In short, nailing your promotional strategy will result in increased revenue. It will also:

• Combat excess inventory
• Help hit sales targets
• Increase market share
• Increase margins
• Help avoid high markdowns

How Retailers can Enhance their Strategy?

There are many ways that brands can improve their promotional planning. This includes:

• Analyzing past performance
• Benchmarking against competitors
• Digitizing the merchandise planning process
• Taking on a customer-centric approach 
• Forecasting demand by calendaring in key promotional periods
• Identifying opportunities within your assortment
• Aligning visual merchandising and stock levels with promotional materials

Case Study: How does MANGO, a global Spanish retail powerhouse, tailor its  assortment and pricing to every local market?

MANGO partnered with EDITED in 2017 to keep track of all of the different brands and retailers in its markets around the globe. The brand’s growth has been supported by its focus on using data to determine the right products for each market as well as guide itspricing policies. Using the EDITED data trove covering more than four billion products, MANGO could easily analyze what its international competitors are stocking and how products are being priced and discounted. The brand can also pinpoint what trends are selling where, shedding light on local customer buying patterns, as well as gaining visibility on discounting activity across the markets where MANGO operates.

“EDITED provides us with very useful tools that help us in monitoring what our competitors are doing in terms of markdown strategy,” said Sergio Domenech, Pricing Markup Analytics at MANGO. “In terms of pricing we use EDITED data retroactively to see in detail what communications our competitors have used in specific promotions.”

Three Ways EDITED Can Help

Our assortment planning tools and pricing intelligence software is primed to drive winning, data-backed promotional strategies.

1. Perfecting your seasonal promotions

Gain key insights into customer expectations across key promotional periods and understand what to promote and when with EDITED’s Retail Reports and Visual Merchandising tool. 

2. Competitor analysis made easy

Our archive of email communications, homepages and category landing pages allows you to benchmark against your competitors, identify opportunities and hindsight your own strategy.

3. Nailing your discounting strategy

EDITED’s Connected Commerce Cloud gives you all the tools you need to discount effectively to drive desired commercial outcomes across seasons and promotional events. Our Market Analytics platform houses over 12 years of retail data, tracking over four billion  global SKUs and counting, meaning you can review market happenings faster and easier than ever before.

EDITED’s suite of planning tools gives your team unrivaled visibility: past, present, and future. You’ll instantly gain a 360-degree view of your own business and competitive marketplace. Learn which actions had the most significant impact on profits and understand why. Grow your market share by easily identifying under-penetrated and under-served categories across every market relevant to your brand. Determine the forecasted impact of actions taken on price, merchandising or inventory before they happen. No matter the objective, we have a solution. Leverage the data you need to create the perfect assortment. Get started here today. 

Summary

• Contrary to popular belief, investing in a sustainable future can bring great value and profitability to a business.
• Textile innovation is a major use case for technology, including more efficient fiber-to-fiber recycling methods and bioengineered fabrics.
• Digital garments can reduce carbon footprints and water consumption through satisfying the consumers’ craving for newness. 3D design capabilities are also cutting down sampling waste.
• Artificial intelligence can aid demand forecasting and help retain margins.
• EDITED helps retailers offer the right product, at the right price, at the right time, which drives sell outs and reduces leftover stock levels.

Introduction

Sustainability is climbing to the top of every retailer’s agenda, thanks to mounting consumer pressure and a growing climate emergency. Despite this, sustainable progress is moving more slowly than necessary, especially in the current economic climate, with many businesses resistant to investing in a problem that doesn’t offer a clear or immediate ROI. However, Gartner highlights great value in sustainability strategies, including enterprise growth and protection from disruption. The company has also reported that 83% of business leaders saw their sustainable initiatives create both short and long-term value. In particular, technological investments prove mutually beneficial for both business and planet, with Forrester drawing attention to the $17.5bn worth of venture capital funding for green tech. Hence, its time to capitalize on this digital age to boost supply chain efficiency.

Textile Innovation

Technology is invaluable when it comes to closing the loop and aiding circularity – particularly when in terms of  fiber-to-fiber recycling methods. It’s estimated that just 1% of recycled clothing gets turned back into new garments, as a result of blended textile compositions and sorting difficulties, but a host of innovators are working to change that. Once these technologies can be scaled and commercialized, McKinsey estimates that 70% of textile waste could be recycled, leading this industry to possess a €1.5bn to €2.2bn profit pool by 2030. 

Textile innovation is also growing at an unprecedented rate, including a slewof bioengineered fabrics that carry a lower environmental impact. From lab-grown leather to algae-based fibers, these manmade materials can be vegan, biodegradable and reduce dependence on chemicals, water and land. The manufacturing process also produces less waste than conventional textiles and a lower carbon footprint, with some biofabrications even absorbing carbon.

The Metaverse

NFTs and digital wearables have become a hot topic in recent years, with the second annual Metaverse Fashion Week having taken place in March 2023, featuring virtual designs from the likes of Tommy Hilfiger and Dolce & Gabbana. DressX, a leader in the digital fashion space, reported that a digital-only garment emits 97% less carbon dioxide than a physical garment and saves 3,300 liters of water per item. Thus, a shift to metaverse fashion can help feed the consumer’s need for newness, while combating overproduction/overconsumption in the physical world. 
Digital garments and 3D designs are also being used to reduce sampling waste and logistics-based emissions, with multiple samples often sent overseas from supplier to buyer in the creation of just one style, simply to be sent to landfill. Hugo Boss has been exploring 3D capabilities since 2013, presenting collections via avatars to global wholesale partners in digital showrooms. The brand also points out greater speed, flexibility, reactivity and cost efficiency as additional benefits, with the full process, from sketch to sales, taking six-eight weeks, compared to the traditional six month process.

Demand Forecasting

Artificial intelligence is also being used to aid demand forecasting and retain margins, allowing retailers to produce more accurate quantities and avoid overstock. The Business of Fashion reported that Gucci’s investment in this technology has allowed the brand to better allocate stock to its stores and global distribution centres, increasing the accuracy of inventory predictions by more than 20%, in comparison to previous methods.

Right Product, Right Place, Right Time – The EDITED Solution

Gartner predicted that technologies that let companies better tailor their product assortments would be a priority in 2023, with retailers aiming to hold 30% less inventory by the end of 2024. This is where EDITED comes in. The most basic solution to reducing fashion waste is taking a more customer-centric approach to assortment planning, using this understanding of the consumer to build more curated product offerings. EDITED’s suite of Market Intelligence tools helps retailers to mitigate risk, filling ranges with bestsellers to drive sell-through in every category, by highlighting gaps and opportunities in their competitor’s, and in their own, assortments. Pricing intelligence tools can also boost sales through competitor benchmarking on a global scale, while Enterprise Intelligence leverages internal business data to identify products for increased exposure, stock replenishment, or price adjustment. Pairing these insights with EDITED’s constant stream of data-backed retail reports will ensure brand’s have the right product, at the right price, at the right time – ultimately reducing leftover stock and creating products that consumers will love for longer.

Interested in learning more? Get started here today. 

Summary

1. The adoption of data-backed decisions not only eliminates the guesswork, but can save time for teams as well as improve the quality of analysis.
2. Teams can no longer rely on historical data alone. Analytics tools can process high amounts of data that deliver clear direction and decisions backed up by both internal and external sources, so there is less risk of error. 
3. A customer-centric strategy is necessary, but for a smaller headcount, considering social media data or consumer habits can sometimes fall low on the priority list. Analytics takes the research stage out for teams and delivers fast, accurate, actionable insights that contribute to long-term business goals.

Installing a Data-Centric Approach to Decisions

As retail navigates tough economic times and a looming recession, while battling headwinds from Russia and China and the strength of the US dollar,data-backed decisions are essential for a businesses’ success, now more than ever.

For small teams, data-led decisions eliminate the guesswork. This, in turn, will directly impact better-informed, business-critical decision-making and save time for team members. McKinsey highlights investment into analytics as a key strategic priority for businesses by improving the speed and quality of decisions as well as boosting profitability. 

For businesses operating with a much smaller headcount, the expectation to deliver this level of analysis still equals that of a much larger team or organization. This is where retail analytics comes in by cutting out the need for a large specialist group to run this volume of analysis and, instead, providing a one-stop-shop that can deliver results in a few clicks of a button.

Better Understand Your Market and Competitors

While, traditionally, decisions based solely on history were considered the bread and butter of seasonal planning, these no longer work in the current climate. Teams must be more agile, adapting to the ever-changing market. As a result, companies need to take into consideration areas outside of historical data, such as market trends and competitor analysis, before making big decisions for a business.

Analytics tools have the power to provide actionable insights. By processing vast amounts of data available to companies, including in-house and wider market trends, teams have better visibility of the complete merchandising experience. Besides the obvious time saving elementfor team members, who would otherwise spend long periods collecting, digesting and presenting information, analytics provides clear direction and decisions backed up by both internal and external sources, so there is less risk of error. 

At EDITED, our Market Analytics tool uses competitive market data to analyze what your competitors are doing right now, and how they’ve behaved historically. This delivers instant results to our customers on spotting trends early, benchmarking pricing and more.

Creating a Customer-Centric Strategy

Customer-centric decision-making has become a focus for businesses, where old notions of a ‘product-first’ way of thinking have taken a back seat. Now, teams can access a wide range of customer data thats is vital to their company. Take a retail business. Customers interact with a brand across its physical stores, ecommerce platforms and social media channels. Analytics tools have the power to convert this information into customer profiles, gaining insights into behaviors that can provide personalized experiences.

With a smaller workforce, research is time. While some of these metrics could contribute to vital retail merchandise planning decisions, they can easily be considered a low priority among other pressing deadlines. Taking the research stage out for teams can deliver fast, accurate, actionable insights that contribute to long-term business goals.

How the EDITED Platform Could Help Your Business

EDITED is the world’s leading AI-driven merchandising experience platform that empowers brands and retailers with real-time decision-making power that drives profits and inspires customers.

We help retailers increase margins, generate more sales and drive better outcomes through AI-driven Market and Enterprise Intelligence to fuel Automation. By connecting business analytics and external market data, retail’s most successful brands and retailers use EDITED’s Platform to get closer to their best customers and future-proof their business.

Ready to take the next step in your journey of retail data and analytics? Get in touch with us today. 

Summary

Customer experience (CX) is the most important factor impacting customer loyalty

• CX has evolved from focusing on point of sale to connecting with customers in discovery and evaluation phase (DX)
• Merchandising experience is the next chapter in CX, providing a personalized shopping experience
• Retail data analytics can help retailers understand customer behavior and engagement with their brand
• Merchandising experience can drive benefits including full-price sell-through, inventory optimization, margin optimization, customer profitability, and customer loyalty
• Their AI-driven merchandising experience platform can help retailers get closer to their customers and drive revenue and profitability

It’s no secret that customer experience is the single most important element impacting customer loyalty.  In fact, according to Gartner, companies that provide a great customer experience are up to 60% more profitable.  But, where in the process should a brand or retailer start thinking about the customer experience?  In order to properly answer that, we need to take a look back at the evolution of CX and where it is headed next.

Evolution of Merchandising Experience

Customer experience initially focused on the point of sale and beyond.  This makes sense as the commerce function is the closest to the customer, so therefore the easiest to influence.  This brought multi-channel and omni-channel experiences like “click and collect”.  It meant that call centers moved from traditional 1-800-YOURBRAND and email to expanded digital channels like chat, sms and social.  Customers enjoyed retail experiences that were more engaging in-store as well as online.  

The next area of focus was on connecting to customers when they were in the discovery and evaluation phase, before the sale.  This is called digital experience (DX).  Digital experience with respect to retail means giving a personalized experience to a shopper.  Ensuring that all of the information that consumers are willing to give is used to provide a retail experience that feels like the brand knows them.  Of course, retailers are also collecting all of that information to help them get closer to their customer and understand how she behaves. We know that customers want to shop when they want, where they want and how they want.   

Merchandising experience is the next chapter in the experience story.  In addition to buying when, where and how they want, of course customers want to buy WHAT they want. Retailers who are able to truly understand their customers will now be able to apply those learnings and insights throughout the merchandising part of the journey – before the customers are even aware of the products that will be coming. 

Benefits of Merchandising Experience

Getting closer to the customer at this stage in the product life cycle will drive huge benefits.  Using retail data analytics to consolidate data and drive insights can help understand how customers behave and how they want to engage with you.   Let’s take a look at some specific areas that can be impacted. 

1. Full-Price Sell-Through – Customers who know they can find what they are looking for at your stores or online will be delighted to pay full price versus run the risk of missing out on your latest collection.  Driving up the full-price sell-through is one of the easiest ways to drive revenue and protect against markdowns.  Customers spend less time shopping than ever before, so make sure they always find a winner in your brand by putting them front and center in your assortment planning strategy.

2. Inventory Optimization – A more surgical vs. blunt approach to inventory allocation that considers customer behavior, geos and channels, alongside an ability to scale this activity across your entire business means you will carry less inventory.

3. Margin Optimization – Drive sales and revenue by making sure customers are finding what they want and paying full price. But, also ensure you’re pricing those products correctly the first time, negating the need for costly markdown activity while optimizing your margin opportunities. Combine this with the ability to control inventory, marketing, and other operational expenses and you will ultimately drive those costs down.

4. Customer Profitability – Identify your most profitable customers and take a customer-centric approach to your assortment and pricing strategies with this cohort in mind to ensure you increase the LTV of each customer.

5. Customer Loyalty – Consistency breeds loyalty.  Be a brand that customers can rely on to find what they need and they will come back – and tell all their friends.  

Now that you know what Merchandising Experience is, the next step is to infuse data driven insights into all of your strategic merchandising decisions from assortment to pricing and promotion to product exposure.  Keep the customer front of mind in each of these steps and you will be ahead of the game..

At EDITED, we specialize in helping softline retailers drive customer centricity by using retail data analytics.  Learn more about how our AI-driven merchandising experience platform can help your business get closer to customers and be more predictable at every stage.

Summary

• Organizations struggle to connect and utilize retail data effectively, hindering their ability to become customer-centric.
• Traditional retail operates in silos, leading to operational inefficiencies and information mistrust between departments.
• Gartner emphasizes the need for a departure from traditional retail operations to create a customer-centric assortment.
• Democratizing access to customer data enables better alignment and informed decision-making across cross-functional teams.
• Investing in data sources that transcend specific departments empowers organizations to be agile and responsive, leading to improved profitability.

Data Challenge in Today’s Retail Environment

In today’s retail environment, organizations usually have a wealth of information and data at their disposal. However, connecting, democratizing, and actioning retail data into meaningful analysis can pose a big challenge, and prevent organizations from becoming truly customer centric. 

Traditional retail has usually operated in silos. Buyers/merchants focus on product development and line selection, the pricing/planning/merchandising teams own margins and forecasting, the marketing teams look after advertising and promotions, and ecomm teams might spend time looking specifically at website traffic, basket sizes and conversion rates. 

The result? Different operational processes, different data systems and ultimately different sources of information. This leads to operational inefficiencies, a mistrust of information shared between departments and sometimes a lot of broken telephones across the business.  

According to Gartner, “shifts in consumer expectations require new approaches that think beyond the “four walls” of the retail store. This requires a departure from the traditional split in operating structure, where merchandising drives procurement of inventory and pricing while marketing manages the messaging, communication and advertising to consumers. As customers increasingly expect personalized experiences, recommendations and offers, marketing, and merchandising must work as a left and right hand to mold the retail experience” 

Leveraging Customer Data: Unlocking Insights for Enhanced Merchandising

So, how can cross-functional teams become better aligned? 

According to Gartner, “retailers are aware of the significant opportunity to leverage vast amounts of customer data to drive in-depth customer analytics that enhance merchandising processes. The goal is creating customer-centric assortments across every touchpoint, optimally priced and available to consumers when and where they expect to browse, transact and acquire items.”

Without that customer level data, it’s impossible for product teams to optimally assort their products for planners / pricing teams to know how to price a line to maximize margin not only on one singular product they might buy, but on the customer’s basket as a whole, and for marketing teams to identify how to pair products together from a promotional and key messaging perspective. In short, a retailer will never be able to truly create a “customer centric assortment” if access to insights and analysis aren’t cohesive across an organization. 

At EDITED, we often hear that many product or site merchandising teams don’t have access to customer-related insights, such as Basket Analysis information. That customer level basket analysis information might sit only with one or two siloed departments, and get reported out on a weekly or sometimes even monthly cadence. The result? Less insight into what customers are actually pairing and buying together, and therefore less overall ability to plan for buys accurately and in alignment with what the customer actually wants to purchase.  

Democratizing Data: Aligning Cross-Functional Teams

By not only using the same sources of information across the business, but by also democratizing access to that data, organizations can start to see big shifts in their results.   

For one site merchandising team, the democratization of customer buying behavior data changed the trajectory of their multi-brand ecommerce business. Prior to having access to EDITED’s connected metrics, customer data and analysis were largely siloed to a separate marketing team that focused on the overall customer, with an emphasis on the brick-and-mortar customer. The ecommerce team was largely blind week to week when it came to understanding who was buying what products, and had to focus on one dimensional analysis of product purchases to make guesses. Not being able to answer basic questions about the customers shopping on their site reflected badly on the department, and was impacting the teams’ results.

When this department started analyzing EDITED’s connected metrics, the team could clearly see the mix of new customers and best customers in the performance of the business. Suddenly, the team could unlock answers about a customer’s participation across all of the company’s brands, and the team was able to identify which categories acquired new customers versus which ones reactivated their profitable ones.

In addition to having a deeper read on their business, the team could take action in the following areas based on the insights they could gather: 

• Make immediate site merchandising changes by boosting certain categories or products
• Create/update recommendations zones on product pages 
• Add pop-ups to the cart page with product recommendations to increase AOV
• Create gifting guides for major holidays/events that aligned with what the customer wanted to purchase together around these periods

Enhancing Decision-Making with External Market Insights

Having visibility into connected metrics across your business is just one piece of the puzzle. Teams can supercharge their insights and decision-making abilities by bringing competitor market insights into their analyses. 

In the case study above, the same customer was also able to monitor the promotions their competitors were running, the types of product bundles on offer and the overall storytelling across the brand. What’s more, cross-functional teams can still gain from the shared insights. Product-led teams can ensure their assortments match up to what the customer wants to buy during specific key holidays/events and marketing can ensure that their messaging, tone and promotions align with both the cultural zeitgeist and the competition. Planning teams can see what and when other products competitors are launching,  and whether the timings of those launches align with any major retail milestones.  

Investing in Data Sources for Agile and Profitable Retail Operations

By making the investment in data sources that can transcend one specific job function or department, your entire organization can become more agile and better equipped to act quickly on new and evolving information that can have a big impact on your revenue. 

EDITED’s merchandising experience platform can act as a unifying source for organizations struggling with fractured business reporting chains and siloed sources of product, pricing and customer data. 

Our platform is specifically designed to support organizations in democratizing insights to employees across departments while aiding them in diagnosing the “why” of their business unit, connecting fast relevant insights, and predicting what the outcomes of taking certain actions might be, so teams can actually act on recommendations quickly and make decisions that will lead to profit.

Summary

The fashion industry recently commemorated ten years since the Rana Plaza Disaster, known as Fashion Revolution Day. Gartner highlighted sustainability as one of the 6 macro factors that will reshape business this decade.

• Commemorated on April 24th each year, Fashion Revolution Day looks to raise awareness of a clean, safe, fair, transparent, and accountable fashion industry. 
• As reported by Vogue Business, it marks fashion’s “deadliest factory collapse” in 2013. 
• As a consequence, the industry is being forced to look at a matrix of systemic issues. As an output of the event, the notion of fast fashion continues to be a highly debated topic. 
• With the increasing focus on sustainable fashion, we dig into the topic and explore the true price of sustainability with Robyn Smith, our Sustainability Lead Analyst here at EDITED. 

In times of increased uncertainty, Robyn recently authored the annual EDITED Sustainability EDIT report which combines retail data and insights with industry knowledge from our team of retail experts. In this interview, we discuss how the retail landscape has evolved and what initiatives Robyn has seen brands and retailers introducing to make fashion and softlines more sustainable. We ask for her opinions on the true price of sustainability and the key points that brands and retailers should consider when investing in future sustainability strategies.  

What are the elements that need to be considered when implementing a sustainable strategy in business?

How would you define the true price of sustainability?

I would say that the true price of sustainability encompasses a product’s cost to the environment, supply chain workers, consumers, and retailers themselves. The cost of a garment goes far beyond its price tag. 

A decade since the Rana Plaza Disaster, what are your thoughts ten years on?

From a retailer and customer centric perspective, we’ve seen a general shift to greater consciousness, however we are by no means where we need to be. Discussions surrounding transparency have grown, but levels of action are still underwhelming. I also think, though the topics go hand-in-hand, ethics and the people of the supply chain have taken a back seat to sustainability when it comes to retailer focus. There needs to be a greater balance as there is still heavy injustice in the quality of life garment workers experience.

How can brands and retailers ensure that they are authentically sustainable?

How can retailers have an impact vs. be accused of ‘greenwashing’ which has been a growing conversation around activists and more inquisitive consumers e.g. the conscious Gen Zs?

As you mentioned, consumers have developed a greater curiosity in the lifecycle of a garment, thanks to growing conversations around climate change in general in the press and on social media. Hence, retailers risk being ‘called out’ if initiatives lack authenticity. For instance, if a retailer introduces resale but doesn’t reduce the number of new styles produced – is this a genuine sustainability move? Or is it just a marketing ploy? Brands must re-consider their entire business model rather than throw recycled PET at the problem. The EU has also announced new greenwashing regulations, so it has become more important than ever to keep sustainability claims credible and backed up with science.

What is the true cost of sustainability and how does it impact business?

Why is it important to understand the true price of sustainability?

COP27 highlighted that we can no longer afford to carry an “ignorance is bliss” mentality and we can now see the impacts of climate change from our very doorsteps. Seasons are changing and retailers are now starting to pay the price, with the UK experiencing one of its wettest Marches on record and sending spring/summer sales plummeting. Both retailers and consumers need to understand the weight of their purchasing decisions to combat overproduction/overconsumption and support people and the planet. Brands should also facilitate this by adding carbon footprints, water consumption, and factory names to product descriptions.

Demand Planning Vs. Cost

Do you think consumers are willing to pay more for sustainable fashion?

When it comes to demand forecasting, planning and price optimization, I think this is an interesting talking point, which sparks mixed opinions. In summary, the lower fast fashion prices we have become accustomed to cannot cover the cost of fair wages and eco materials. Forbes cited a Gartner survey that found over half of customers will only purchase from companies that practice environmental and social sustainability; that applies to the entire product life cycle. But, with a cost of living crisis on our hands, many retailers and customers are not in a position to absorb these increased costs. A recent survey by Untold Insights also found that 53% of Gen Zs and Millenials, the wokest of all generations, prioritize money-saving options over sustainable alternatives. Hence, 96% said that the current economic climate inhibits them from purchasing sustainably and has also contributed to the proliferation of resale – where consumers can find savings and sustainability in the same place. More information on this market can also be found in the Sustainability EDIT. 

How can retailers boost interest in higher-priced sustainable products?

In recent months we’ve seen capsule wardrobes surface as a key trend. Consumers are turning to versatile staples to cut back on spending. Brands should consider “back-to-basics” assortment planning and focus on “elevated essentials” in the visual merchandising of conscious core styles, encouraging consumers to pay a little extra for high-quality tees and tanks that don’t cost the earth (in both senses) and last longer. Also, focus on the ‘price per wear’ of more expensive styles to emphasize value.

Key Points To Consider When Investing In A Sustainable Strategy

What are your top points for retailers to consider when investing in sustainability?

It is important to remember the benefits sustainable developments can have on businesses rather than just the environment. I believe true change is possible when retailers evolve their perceptions of sustainability as something they have to, do to something they want to do. 

• If set up right, resale and sustainable services can be profitable! At the moment consumer spending has reduced, but there is a definite opportunity in attitudes changing towards clothing – shifting mentality back to periods when garments were an investment and made to re-wear, repair and recycle.
• One of the easiest first steps into sustainability is improving the assortment planning process and taking a customer-centric approach. Hence, EDITED’s data is invaluable when it comes to demand forecasting and eliminating waste. Through having the right product, at the right price, at the right time, we can spare landfill from excess stock. Reducing production levels and offering a more curated selection of products can also boost efficiency and justify more premium price points. In turn, this enhanced, simplified shopping experience can boost loyalty, in an era of fickle consumers.

Interested in understanding more?

Stay informed with EDITED’s Sustainability EDIT, your go-to source for the latest insights, trends, and strategies for a more sustainable future. From the rise of thriftcore and the state of sustainable textiles to a deep dive into sustainable denim and sustainability on the fall 2023 runway, our report covers all the essential topics shaping the industry. Plus, get an exclusive preview of the Conscious Calendar 2024.

In this time of uncertainty, EDITED serves as a guiding force. The Annual Sustainability EDIT pairs data and insights from our Market Intelligence platform with industry knowledge from our team of retail experts. This report covers just some of the vital information EDITED’s clients rely on to make informed decisions. You can download your copy here. 

About EDITED

EDITED is the world’s leading AI-driven merchandising experience platform that empowers brands and retailers with real-time decision-making power that drives profits and inspires customers.

We help retailers increase margins, generate more sales and drive better outcomes through AI-driven Market and Enterprise Intelligence to fuel Automation. By connecting business analytics and external market data, retail’s most successful brands and retailers are using EDITED’s Platform to get closer to their best customers and future-proof their business.

Interested in learning more? See what opportunities you can with a truly sustainable strategy here.

Summary

• AI is expected to have a significant impact on the retail industry, with increased investment predicted.
• Advancements in technology and data analytics have improved retail business processes, leading to higher profitability, better customer experience, and employee engagement.
• PUMA is an example of a brand using data and analytics to optimize assortment and pricing decisions, resulting in increased sales and better market intelligence.
• Steps to get started with data and analytics in retail include determining goals, gathering and owning data, choosing the right tools, analyzing the data, and communicating findings effectively.
• Continuous learning, exploration, and refinement are essential in the application of retail intelligence and data analytics.
• Brands should involve all teams in using market intelligence for decision-making, not just silo it to one team.
• EDITED is an AI-driven merchandising experience platform that helps brands and retailers make real-time decisions and drive profits through data and analytics.

Introduction

Getting started with data analysis can at first feel and appear intimidating. If this is your initial reaction, fear not, EDITED works with many leading brands and retailers, and our retail strategists experience this daily. It is only natural to fear the unknown. The world has evolved with advancements in technology, and terms like ‘digital transformation’, and ‘data and analytics’ bounce around daily from the leaders in the retail and technology industry. We break down the meaning behind these terms to help you understand the basics and to get started with data and analytics in retail. 

Understanding Digital Transformation & What It Means for Your Business

Within your role as a brand or retailer, your business will always be looking into how to improve and deliver growth. Technology has become a catalyst for you and your wider team across different departments, enabling brands and retailers to accelerate, optimize and improve current business processes. From pricing optimization to assortment planning and visual merchandising, technology can act as a tool to help you move away from previously time constraint, siloed processes and instead empower you to make informed, aligned, and strategic business decisions.

• Gartner describes digital transformation as not just a technology strategy; it’s a strategy to leverage technology to enable new business models, new products and services, and new strategies — and drive business growth. 
• Data and analytics (D&A) is referred to as “the ways data is managed to support all uses of data, and the analysis of data to drive improved decisions, business processes and outcomes, such as discovering new business risks, challenges and opportunities.”

An understanding of digital transformation and what this means throughout the business is key to enabling and empowering your whole retail business though to align. A recent Forbes article described 2023 as ‘shaping up to be the year of AI’, (artificial intelligence) quoting International Data Corporation, expecting retail ‘to invest more in AI technology than any other sector except finance. Between them, the two industries will account for roughly one-quarter of worldwide AI investment, set to reach $300 billion by 2026. Furthermore, in a recent Coresight Research study, 60% of brands and retailers plan to invest in AI to automate visual product content.’

How have advancements in technology and the application of data and analytics improved retail business processes?

According to McKinsey, technology will likely double store profitability. ‘The tech-enabled “store of the future” can double retailers’ EBIT margins and will be easier to operate. It will also provide a better customer experience and greater employee engagement.’ 

With this context, it is clear to see and understand why your business might be starting to look for ways to invest in technologies to aid in delivering business objectives. In the example below they provide examples of how data can impact retail business processes across the business. 

PUMA: Harnessing the Power of Retail Data Analysis for Success

Leading athletic and apparel brand PUMA is a recent example of a leader that invests in data and analytics to optimize their assortment and pricing decisions to find the ‘sweet spot’ in a saturated market. “As a brand that sells into hundreds of retailers, it can be quite common to only get data back from 20% of them,” said Danny Brown, PUMA UK’s Business Operations Manager. “What about all the rest? What’s my discount in the market at the moment? What’s my average selling price?” How do you formulate a successful pricing strategy in a saturated market such as the UK to get high sell-through, but not negatively impact margin? “As far as price goes, is the product situated in the right place?” asked Danny Brown. “I know personally, that if you overprice by £5, your sell-through can fall off by 70%.”

PUMA used Market Analytics assortment and option pricing tools to spot gaps in the PUMA assortment within specific price points at a key retail partner. “We launched on a key partner’s site first and our product sold well, but not as anticipated. I wanted to understand why this was,” asked Danny Brown.

Market Intelligence technology provided the insight that led to PUMA’s creating three new custom styles of footwear for that retailer. This decision increased sales with this key account, where one design became a PUMA UK top 10 footwear best-seller, with a stock turnover of thousands of units per week.

Using Market Analytics tools for market intelligence helps PUMA make data-driven decisions to quickly pivot product and pricing strategies to react to an ever-changing market. Moreover, the team can analyze impacts on the wider business and how it affects their day-to-day processes. “You gain access to data you’d never be able to get by manually searching. This allows me to make decisions on a local level and share with the wider global team,” said Danny Brown.

A Step By Step Guide To Getting Started With Data And Analytics

Getting started with retail data analytics can seem intimidating, but with the right approach, it can be a rewarding and valuable skill to learn for both the longevity of your career and your business. Here are some steps to help you get started:

1. Determine your goals: Before diving into retail data and insights, it is essential to determine what you want to achieve. Whether solving a specific problem, improving a business process that might be manual, or gaining insights into a particular area for your job role, having a clear goal in mind will help guide your data analysis efforts. For example, if you want to optimize your pricing strategy or identify top retail trends, plan your assortments, or even look to expand into new markets or categories.
2. Gather and own your data: Not all data is created equal. Once you have a goal and a basic understanding of the tools and techniques involved in data analytics, the next step is to gather and own your data. Whether you track top retail trends or your job requires competitive shopping or price and promotional data analysis as a buyer or planner, you need to understand where you are pulling your data from and the quality of it. If you are focusing on too many data sources or manual analysis, it could be costing you valuable time and you should question the validity of the data too. Partner with a world-class implementation team who are experts in supporting retailers to evaluate their data and determine the best data-sources to include within your analysis. Find data analytics solutions that will not simply report the news but combine those data siloes to generate AI-driven guided analysis and opportunity insights. 
3. Choose the right tools: There are many tools available for data analytics, from spreadsheets to specialized software. However, if you want to optimize time-constraining or limited manual processes, consider a merchandising intelligence platform that combines external market data with smart analysis of your internal data. Investing in a tool where retail data is pre-prepared and data insights are automatically authored can help you save time and money and make informed decisions with data to back up your theories. 
4. Analyze your data: Once the data is clean and organized, it’s time to analyze it which involves applying statistical techniques to the data to gain insights and identify patterns or top retail trends. If you have invested in a retail analytics platform, much of these will be automated already. Retail vendors often have existing workbooks, template dashboards, and resources to help get you started. Or even retail experts that will support you on your journey tailored to your level of expertise: ranging from training to take more of a consultative approach. 
5. Communicate your findings: Finally, communicate your findings to others clearly and concisely. It may involve creating visualizations or reports that help others understand the insights you have gained from the data. The world of analysis can be democratic. Make your reports easily available to anyone who needs to make a decision in your business to aid in transparency and alignment. The art of storytelling with insights can prove invaluable to you as you demonstrate theories or suggestions with data-backed findings to justify your recommendations.

Remember, the application of retail intelligence and data analytics is a continuous process of learning, exploration, and refinement. With time and practice, you can develop a deeper understanding of retail data analysis and use it to drive meaningful business insights and decisions. 

So what advice does Danny Brown from PUMA have for other brands out there looking to incorporate market intelligence into their processes?

“Bring everyone on board, don’t just silo use of data to one team. Anyone who makes big product decisions should use it.”

About EDITED

EDITED is the world’s leading AI-driven merchandising experience platform that empowers brands and retailers with real-time decision-making power that drives profits and inspires customers.

We help retailers increase margins, generate more sales and drive better outcomes through AI-driven Market and Enterprise Intelligence to fuel Automation. By connecting business analytics and external market data, retail’s most successful brands and retailers use EDITED’s Platform to get closer to their best customers and future-proof their business.

Ready to take the next step in your journey of retail data and analytics? Get in touch with us today. 

Summary

• Cluttered inboxes filled with competitor newsletters prevent teams from analyzing promotions and answering important questions about timing.
• Relying on emails for benchmarking is cumbersome and highly inaccurate.
• An automated view of past and present promotions can refine promotional strategy.
• EDITED’s Visual Merchandising platform provides historical and up-to-date data to analyze competitors’ emails, websites, and landing pages.
• Using data for timing promotions and optimizing email marketing strategy can increase revenue.
• Swapping manual curation for an aggregated marketplace view can save time and lead to more strategic promotions.

Introduction: The challenge of analyzing competitor promotions

The feeling is probably all too familiar for digital promotions, merchandising/planning and marketing teams. An inbox filled to the brim with emails from other retailers who run the gamut. Everyone’s newsletters, from your closest competitor to retailers who might sit in a more inspirational/aspirational bracket, are likely clogging up your team’s inboxes. 

The result is not only a cluttered mailbox but also constant distraction that prevents your team from getting straight down to analyzing and answering the question: 

What promotions are other retailers running and when?    

Knowing when your competitors are running their promotions can have a huge impact on your business’s revenue, and timing things precisely is essential to retail success. Without a view of when other retailers are launching their promotions, you could be stuck running promotions too late or, on the flip side, too early. The result? Missing out on lost traffic and, ultimately, revenue. 

The limitations of relying on past emails for retail benchmarking

Typically, marketing and merchandising/planning teams have relied on their own inboxes as gateways to the past. They’ll spend hours digging through countless emails to see “what did retailer X do for Black Friday last year?” Or, “How early did brand “Y” start mentioning spring sales?” 

That process is not only a cumbersome one but also a highly inaccurate endeavor. Why? 

1. It would probably drive your team a little crazy to be subscribed to anything more than a dozen or so retailers’ newsletters at a time (meaning you’re probably missing out on many other important competitors).  
2. It’s likely there are retailers who weren’t on your radar for the period you’re trying to benchmark against.  
3. Storing one-off emails in your own inbox makes any kind of aggregated analysis incredibly time-consuming, if not impossible. Yet, pulling together a full view of the types of promotions being messaged, the specific timing of such promotions, as well as the key themes and standout imagery of the retailers you’re trying to benchmark against, is essential to truly gaining visibility of what’s going on across your market.  

Overall, digging through an inbox is a thankless and inefficient task to ask of a team, and can lead to roundabout discussions that end up being swayed by ‘gut’ over fact, and an over-emphasis on analyzing only a handful of competitive retailers, rather than looking at a holistic view of your market. 

The benefits of an automated view of past and present retail promotions

Using historical and up-to-the-day data, your teams can have eyes on the emails, website homepages, and landing pages of every retailer your business cares about. 

Using EDITED’s Visual Merchandising platform, you can refine your promotional strategy with ease, by quickly pinpointing current and historical key promotional points in the calendar. Your team can instantly analyze messaging and the marketing strategy of your competitors without the need for time-consuming and constant manual curation of competitor website pages and inbox-filling email subscriptions.

What does this mean for your business? You’ll be able to launch your promotions at the right time, by having an immediate view of the timing and cadence of specific promotional or discounting messages to influence your promotional and discount strategy.

How EDITED’s Visual Merchandising platform can refine promotional strategy

In addition to launching promotions at the right time, automated benchmarking of your competitors’ emails can also support optimizing your email marketing strategy. 

Lane Bryant, a plus size heritage retailer in the US, was able to identify ideal promotional timing and content. Previously this had been done using historical data, butut with the help of the Visual Merchandising heat map tool, the team was able to pinpoint in real time the optimal timing for this content, changing the email delivery cadence to a day earlier and resulting in an increase in email open rates. “Using EDITED we can see competitors’ and hundreds of other brands’ digital marketing with just a few clicks,” said Adam Rohletter, Lane Bryant’s AVP of Marketing.

Overall, using data to guide your decision making when it comes to timing your promotions can have a huge impact on your site traffic and ultimate revenue. Simply swapping manual curation for an aggregated marketplace view will not only free up your team’s time but also ensure that you’re planning promotions in a more strategic way. 

Interested in learning more? Get started here. 

Market inflationary pressures are impacting the cost of goods, so creating an airtight price architecture is crucial to support your brand in maintaining and improving margin. In 2022, average order values were $7 more on average than they were the year prior, reflecting the continued impact of inflation on recommended retail prices. Without easy access to discovering the most profitable or greatest potential products in your business and understanding price fluctuations in the market, it is harder to maximize opportunities within your assortment.

Once you have the right product, it’s then crucial to identify the right price and assess its impact on your margins. Retailers face this challenge every day. Over pricing reduces full price sell-through and increases markdown spend, while under pricing product and disproportionate discount depths reduce margin and profitability. 

In a recent Business of Fashion article, it is stated that “Too conservative of an approach to inventory means missing lucrative full-price sales and risking shopper disappointment — an opportunity cost that most brands are reluctant to bear, especially if they answer to public shareholders every quarter. More often, retailers overestimate demand, and are stuck with excess goods with no other option than to mark down prices.”

Retailers need to have complete visibility on both assortment and pricing strategies in the market, with a connected view into profitability, product performance and your customers.
What if there was a way to do it all? Increase selling prices across key categories, improve full price sell-through, and increase gross margin all by getting your product and pricing right from the start. How exactly can you do it all? By leveraging both competitive data and internal business data to optimize the price of every product in your assortment, no matter where it is sold. Using this type of merchandising intelligence helps to connect every data point, giving your team the tools to super-charge your pricing strategy.

Use Competitive Data to Accurate Benchmarking for Profitable Pricing Strategy

Creating a profitable pricing strategy is challenging. Merchandising, planning, pricing and strategy teams all need visibility on the price increases taking place (or not) across their own markets, categories and SKUs. Benchmarking your own market regularly is one way to ensure you’re consistently recalibrating your price points in the right direction. Aggregated data that provides views of your market can support in pinpointing where you can grow, maintain, or potentially lower price to drive more volume or move more in line with the competition.

If we look at various categories across the market, many are being impacted by inflationary pressures. For example, 2022 witnessed soaring cotton prices thanks to several contributing factors, such as rising fuel and logistical costs. Across the market, several denim retailers raised the price of selected jeans. Lee has the highest proportion of products in stock that have seen a price increase, particularly in the UK at 38%. Looking closer, the retailer has implemented different price increases across its women’s Scarlett high jeans, with elevations of £5-£10 depending on the wash. For example, the price of its black rinse wash remains flat at £85 with only 61% cotton content.

Retailers who can react quickly to market changes can better position themselves for success. By analyzing what pricing shifts are taking place within your market on a regular basis, you can react to those changes with ease and enable your teams to make better decisions based on real-time information. Consolidating your views by region and channel also means you’ll be better positioned to enter new markets, grow existing ones and refine pricing strategies based on currency fluctuations.

Unleashing the Power of Internal Data: AI-Based Pricing Optimization for Retailers

Once your teams have a good read on what’s happening in the market, it’s critical to compare that to what’s happening inside your business – looking at your top or poor performers, your pricing and markdown strategy and your customers. Consumers want stability and consistency when it comes to pricing no matter where they shop. They have access to more pricing information across all channels and hone in on the inconsistencies more than ever before. 

Gartner recommends that retailers should “Evaluate and deploy AI-based pricing optimization applications to support a pricing strategy to improve speed and scale of decision making through smarter and faster analytics and optimize customer data to target the right customer with the right pricing and promotions.”

Investing in this type of AI gives retailers the ability to find gaps in their own strategies and pinpoint opportunities to optimize pricing, whether that be adjusting pricing based on stock cover, pinpointing underpriced items or where markdowns can be reduced. It’s important to get a holistic view of your digital channel and stores and prioritize the most impactful changes based on predicted profit gain and margin protection.

Your Complete Pricing Toolkit: Achieving Profitability with EDITED’s Merchandising Experience Platform

No matter the stage in the retail life cycle, looking at data brings focus to where action is required. In pre-season hindsighting and planning, you can pair internal data for last season’s performance and the top performing products and categories alongside full competitor and market analysis. From here your team can nail your assortment plan, price architecture, marketing strategy and promotional plan by backing the right products and trends at the right time. By looking at this data even further in season, your team can respond quickly to new, high performing trends, make any price adjustments, activate new promotions to clear slow moving stock and determine which products require more exposure or replenishment. 

That’s why the world’s most successful retailers use EDITED. More than just data, EDITED’s merchandising experience platform supports established workflows, driving faster, smarter decision-making with indispensable data and insights. 

EDITED’s suite of pricing tools designed specifically for retail pricing teams augments your ability to understand and identify value-driving opportunities in minutes. Monitor pricing across all your markets, make strategic changes to your price architecture and maximize margin across all categories. Understand macro industry pricing and discounting trends to focus your analysis in the most relevant areas and uncover areas of interest that you might not have considered. Monitor the impact of pricing and discounting decisions at a more granular level in a scalable way.

Wherever your product is sold, optimize your pricing strategy accordingly. See what opportunities you can discover here. 

Summary

• Retailers face pressure to predict upcoming trends accurately
• Trends are determined by popularity and influenced by multiple sources
• Trends have a bell-curve effect and can vary in lifecycle
• Data analysis can supplement trend forecasting
• External market data and internal data can help catch the next trend before it’s too late
• Analyzing data behind the runway, looking to trend leaders, and understanding key data points can aid in trend forecasting
• EDITED provides data-backed insights for successful retailing

When planning a product range that isn’t going to arrive in stores for another six to 12  months minimum, there will, no doubt, have been times when a crystal ball would have come in very handy. There’s huge pressure on retail product and merchandising teams to ‘get the trends right,’ often with few resources supporting that outcome.

So, What is a Trend?

Essentially it’s a popularity contest – the products, categories, or themes that are popular in your customers’ world.

But who Determines What is Popular?

Trend influence has evolved from a more linear process of luxury designers creating looks picked up by magazine editors and popularised through editorial content to being impacted by multiple sources, whether social media, celebrities, music or cultural zeitgeists, micro-influencers and everything in between.

There’s also consistent talk of whether trends are slowing down or speeding up, and the truth is, it’s a bit of both! The lifecycle of a trend can vary hugely depending on the timing or season in which it emerges, whether it’s a micro-trend or a more consistent, classic trend  with more longevity. The influence of sustainability and thoughts around consumerism are also impacting slower trend cycles.

The Lifecycle of a Trend

Trends tend to have a bell-curve effect; emerging and maybe niche trends begin small growing to have mass appeal and popularity at the peak before inevitable saturation and customer interest wanes, and the trend’s popularity begins to decline.Where you position yourself as a brand on that bell curve is crucial – as a trend leader, you’ll be looking to the front end of that curve before moving on to the next trend. If you have more mass appeal, you’ll be looking to take maximum advantage of the emerging and peak of the trend curve, getting out before the decline and associated markdown costs associated with pushing it for too long with a particular trend. But Off-Price brands, those with trend following or even counter-seasonal customers will still see benefits in analyzing peaking and declining trends.

Supplementing Trend Forecasting with Data

Trend forecasting is not an exact science and can be influenced by various factors, including cultural shifts, technological advancements, and economic fluctuations. Therefore, it’s critical for brands to supplement their trend forecasting with up-to-date information and data on the latest trends and developments in the market to ensure greater levels of predictability in a very unpredictable environment.

How can External Market Data and my Own Internal Data Help me to Catch the Next Trend Before it’s too Late?

Analyze the Data Behind the Runway

Although the source of a trend is multi-faceted, there is no denying the heavy influence that runway collections still have on the apparel, footwear, accessories, beauty, and even homeware market. But with two main seasons, the four core fashion weeks, several emerging fashion weeks, the addition of pre-fall and cruise collections, Haute Couture, plus more specialist shows like Miami Swim Week, it can feel like an all-consuming task to absorb all the trend information you need to. So it’s beneficial to supplement your own research with digestible analyst reports and data-backed insights from across the shows. High-level theme overviews will support you in focusing your research where it needs to be, and category-specific reports and color analysis will immediately surface the areas where design and product development time is most needed and support the speedy creation of briefs to manufacturers. Speed to market is crucial in retail, so kick off your design and product development as soon as possible with the support of data-backed insights that will expedite the whole process.

Look to the Trend Leaders

Within each market, some brands are renowned for being ahead of the curve. It’s crucial to understand who those brands are and analyze their product strategy and how it might influence your own ahead of your assortment planning phase. While in-season, it’s critical to keep an eye on your competitors and even more aspirational brands to keep track of new products emerging in the market that you might be able to develop and get into your assortment quickly with close-to-home production. While other brands are great to keep an eye on, as we’ve already mentioned, trends are emerging from even more sources, so make sure you have access to GoogleTrends, Pinterest search terms, Instagram and Tik-Tok trend insights to give you a 360-degree view of what’s happening in the market.

Know the Key Data Points

There are some key data points that you will want to focus on to track emerging and declining trends in the market. Full visibility of these data points will help you make better decisions about investing or stepping away from a trend.

1. “New -In” Products – How many new products aligned to a trend are being brought to the market? Track the increase of new products at trend lead, market-leading brands, and competitors to identify a product’s upward or downward trajectory.
2. In -Stock Products – How many products in this trend are in stock? Align these insights with an understanding of whether the number of products held “in stock” is increasing or decreasing across the market to determine whether this product is building in assortments.
3. “Majority sell-out “ data – How quickly are these products moving through the market? Are they coming in and selling through the majority of SKUs quickly? Are they being replenished? Are they consistently being sold at full price? Answering all these questions with data will help you pinpoint potential top movers in the market.
4. Marketing Messaging – Is the trend being called out in a big way in marketing emails, ecommerce homepages and blogs? Track an increase in mentions or analyze how messaging has become more focused around the trend over time to validate further that the trend is important.  
5. “First discount” activity – When trending products are first discounted in the market, this can indicate that a trend has reached its peak and is now declining. You might want to refrain from investing any further or make some decisions about holding or converting future planned stock.
6. Within your own data, some compelling insights might lead to capitalizing on a trend before it’s too late! Consider whether you have visibility into products with low availability, but high views – this metric will help you determine where there are products with trading potential in your assortment.
7. What products are bringing new customers to your brand? Identify which new products are being bought most by new customers to identify where you may have hit on a trending product that’s bringing new customers to your door.

How can EDITED help?

Here at EDITED, we understand that trend identification is critical to successful retailing. Whilst we might not be that magic crystal ball that we all wish we sometimes had, we do have the key data points and insights you need to enrich your research and inject some much-needed predictability into the whole process. Get in contact to find out how our customers rely on these insights to uncover new trends and drive incremental revenue every season.

EDITED is the world’s leading AI-driven merchandising experience platform and empowers retailers with relevant-time decision-making that drives profit and inspires customers.