Gathering Business Intel at Fashion Week | Fashion's Collective

Back in October, I had the pleasure of moderating a panel discussion at the FashionForward: Commerce event entitled ?Opportunities in Fashion Week,? between Moda Operandi Co-founder and CEO, Aslaug Magnusdottir and Fashion GPS Marketing Director, Jennifer Jann.

There is no doubt that much ? maybe too much ? has already been said about the role that the digital space has had in contributing to the evolution of fashion week from a seasonal, trade-only appointment to an increasingly accessible and dynamic consumer-facing event. From back-stage access, front-row blogging, live show streaming, real-time Instagram-ing and everything in between, today fashion week is centered on using the traditional levers of the entertainment industry to instill desire within consumers, with the end-goal of driving sales.

But during the FashionForward anti-conference, it seemed opportune to hone in on the fact that fashion week, at its core, is a trade event; it?s an important, seasonal business appointment between brands, buyers and editors. As such, when we speak of opportunities around fashion week, it would be wrong, or at least remiss, to focus exclusively on the outward marketing opportunities that fashion week offers, or the different social media initiatives that brands have adopted to monetize B2C consumer engagement.

Indeed, both Fashion GPS and Moda Operandi (despite it?s B2C target) are businesses that highlight the opportunities during fashion week that information technology can offer brands internally, either to run their businesses more efficiently or to make more accurate choices, with fashion week as a starting point. Central to this is the idea of ramping up the level of business intelligence that brands can tap into to track, analyze and evaluate data, in order to make smarter decisions.

Fashion GPS is a press-facing business tool, conceived at the outset to support brands within the B2B space, born out of a functional need to create efficiencies when it came to editorial sample management. Launched in 2006, the company today offers an increasing range of services, helping brands manage events, samples and product pitches to editors. Today, the company counts PR firms KCD, Karla Otto, and The Communications Store as clients, as well as many well-known fashion brands.

As it was devised as a business tool, reporting and analytics were quickly built into the product. And while speaking at Fashion Forward: Commerce, Jann stressed the value of the reporting tools to Fashion GPS customers, by enabling brands to demonstrate concrete PR activity ROI across the entire sample life-cycle.

By contrast, Moda Operandi was devised as a consumer-facing business, the first online luxury e-retailer to allow customers to engage in pre-commerce; that is to say, to buying tomorrow?s fashion today. Launched in 2011, Moda Operandi opened the doors for a niche, fashion forward clientele to pre-order from names such as Peter Pilotto, Valentino, and Christopher Kane during online trunk shows, in line with the fashion buying cycle.

Nonetheless, the timing of the Moda Operandi transaction affords the company unique insight into end-customer preferences, which it can then communicate to its brand partners. Indeed, Magnusdottir shared a telling story at the event about the earliest Moda Operandi trunk show participant, Alexander Wang. The trunk show in question featured a sparkly jean in two color-ways: black and fuchsia. Despite predictions that end-customers would prefer the black to the pink, the sell-through report indicated the opposite ? pink was the clear winner. This information, which was relayed back to the wholesale team at Alexander Wang during market, enabled the company to provide trade buyers with concrete evidence to buy deeper into the pink jean ? which ultimately became a seasonal best seller.

Indeed, the business intelligence that both companies offer is at the core of what makes their product increasingly important to brands as we enter the age of big data. A recent issue of the Harvard Business Review which focused exclusively on the phenomenon that is big data noted that today, ?mobile phones, online shopping, social networks, electronic communication, GPS all produce torrents of data as a by-product of their ordinary operations. Each of us is a data generator.?

It goes on to note that according to a recent study across sectors that focused on the organizational and technology management practices of 330 public North American companies, it found that ?the more companies characterized themselves as data-driven, the better they performed on objective measures of financial and operational results. In, particular, companies in the top third of their industry in the use of data-driven decision making were on average 5% more productive and 6% more profitable.?

For Moda Operandi, an early awareness into what end-customers want was critical to the company?s decision last Fall to launch a traditional e-tail section of the website, where customers can ?buy now and wear now.? Moreover, by being able to test young, emerging brands from around the globe, the company is able to offer cash flow to these fledgling brands at the start of the season ? something that, in this post-recession market, is incredibly important.

Meanwhile, Fashion GPS has been building on its platform with the announcement of its recent partnership with Style.com in order to deliver an ever-more vertically integrated service offer. The add-on will allow users to organize invites, check into shows and then review show pictures, take notes, mark favorite looks, request samples and track those samples via a single mobile platform.

In the end, while Moda Operandi and Fashion GPS are very different companies, they both leverage the digital space by addressing a need and delivering fashion brands critical data in order to plan more effectively. This data allows them to ultimately run smarter businesses ? something which, in an industry characterized by SME?s and family firms, enables even those brands that do not have the resources to invest in big data to reap considerable business opportunities around fashion week.

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Photo Credits: Michael W Davidson

Source: http://fashionscollective.com/FashionAndLuxury/02/gathering-business-intel-at-fashion-week/

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