Online fashion retailer Asos claimed a 37% revenue increase in the last quarter to 2013 thanks to data insights that helped structure its pricing competitively, the brand has said.
Asos has signed up for 200 of its fashion buyers to receive access to Editd, a London startup which aggregates fashion trend and retail information from retail sites, industry mood boards, social media and trend blogs.
Asos has doubled its subscription to the service following an 18-month experiment, but announced today that Editd's information on pricing has helped drive revenues and a 33% increase in sales.
Editd’s chief executive Geoff Watts told The Guardian that the startup's real value came from helping buyers make informed decisions grounded in data.
"Retail on a basic level is all about buying the right things, so getting that right and making sure you’re selling the right product at the right price is really what dictates your success," Watts said.
"Our product is all about helping people make those decisions," he added.
Although Asos aren't its biggest client – Editd also works with the likes of Target and Gap – Watts speaks glowingly about the online fashion retailer that is "exploring new technologies and giving things a try."
Watts said: "If you think about where they’re growing in the market, how they’re perceived and the kind of work they’re doing, they were one of the organisations we wanted to work with."
This is echoed by Asos' retail director Maria Hollins, who stressed the importance of making the right decisions faster than their competitors.
“At ASOS, being first for fashion means being always competitive and having just the right assortment," she said. "We're using Editd every day to help us make critical buying and trading decisions”.
Watts, a programmer, and co-founder Julia Fowler, a fashion designer, founded Editd in 2009 and moved from Australia to launch the company.
Their platform combines a number of datasets – analysing retail sales numbers, catwalk photographs, and buzz on social media – to provide buyers with insights into the latest trends, as well as what's selling particularly well.
Watts played down the significance of social media as sparking new trends – trends have "always come from the streets as much as they have come from labels" – but added that social media had made the process quicker and also allowed people around the world to create communities and connect around similar fashion styles.
Editd also believe that its success is down to giving its customers insights into the latest trends in real-time, with buyers also able to receive alerts.
Fowler said that real-time analysis "not only helps them understand ever-changing demand, but [companies] can now significantly reduce wastage by making less mistakes in pricing and assortment, and therefore maintaining and accelerating their growth and overseas expansion."
Using this information, buyers can look at trends from other companies also. When did their competitor launch sales in the past and what kind of styles and brands are selling the best?
This combined allows retailers to buy items that their customers want before then selling it as a price that isn't undercut by competitors.
Fashion and technology is a growing trend
Editd isn't the only company looking towards technology to enhance the retail experience. During their 2012 London fashion week show, Topshop partnered with Facebook to allow online users to customise clothes that appeared on the catwalk.
The aim, according to Topshop's chief marketing officer, was to "take the energy and the excitement of our iconic Oxford Street store to millions of people all over the world through Topshop.com."
In the same year, Tesco tested a virtual fitting-room on their website, allowing customers to create a 3D version of themselves before seeing what they might look like in certain outfits.
Beyond retail, there have also been a number of companies looking to experiment with wearable technology. Google, for example, released a version of Google Glass earlier this week that looked less futuristic and smartwatches have been a growing trend, starting with the Pebble watch and moving to the Samsung Galaxy Gear, which has failed to generate much momentum.
• Did you know that fashion is worth £21bn annually to the UK?
