Under Armour, Crocs and John Hardy Among New
Customers Utilizing Five New Industry InsightSuite Solutions
First Insight, Inc., a technology company transforming how
leading retailers make product investment, pricing and marketing
decisions, today announced the addition of more than 60 new retail
and brand partners to its Customer-Centric Merchandising Platform.
New First Insight customers span the entire retail spectrum,
including digitally native brands, traditional retailers, and
wholesale brands and licensees, with brands including Under Armour
and Crocs.
“We are excited that the retail industry continues to embrace
our Customer-Centric Merchandising Platform,” said Greg Petro, CEO
of First Insight. “At this point, the vast majority of the
retailers and brands that are leveraging predictive analytics and
digital product testing are doing so using First Insight. This is a
testament to the strength of our expanded platform which applies
machine learning and predictive analytics to nearly a decade of
Voice of Consumer data. By providing retailers and brands with the
most information and strongest recommendations on the products they
are bringing to market, we are ensuring they are able to meet their
customers with the right products and prices out of the gate.”
“Under Armour’s mission is to make you better and our goal is to
build innovative products that solve a problem and help
athletes perform at a higher level,” said Maggie Winkel, VP of
Global Merchandising at Under Armour (NYSE:UA). “Through First
Insight’s analytics, we are incorporating the wants and needs
expressed by our consumers into our product development process
every step of the way. At Under Armour, every product we build
begins with an insight and First Insight enables us to stay
close to our consumer, bring differentiated product more quickly to
market, and deliver performance solutions to athletes
globally.”
First Insight’s Customer-Centric Merchandising Platform is a
suite of solutions based on the company’s successful pre-season
product testing platform that brings deep analysis, increased
predictive capabilities, precise price forecasting, targeted
customer segmentation data and accurate buy quantity
recommendations on new products. The solutions are fast and simple
to use while fully compliant with global standards for data
governance and privacy.
In addition, First Insight today launched five new InsightSuite
solutions tailored to specific retail sectors including:
Footwear
Designed specifically for footwear wholesale brands,
InsightSuite/FW (footwear) delivers actionable intelligence early
in the design cycle, reducing tooling, prototypes and sample costs,
while providing sales teams with forward-looking consumer data
segmented by retail channel. These data are used at sell-in to
increase adoption rates.
Caleres (NYSE:CAL) is the parent company of a number of footwear
brands including Naturalizer, Allen Edmonds, Franco Sarto, Dr.
Scholl’s and Famous Footwear. “Being able
to present direct consumer feedback during line reviews
really elevates the discussions we have with our retail partners,”
said Caleres GMM Keith Duplain. “Our sales team is more confident
making line recommendations and our partners feel they are making
more data-driven, consumer-based decisions.”
Crocs’ (NASDAQ:CROX) VP of Marketing Analytics Ed Wunsch
continued, “First Insight results help us to target our styles,
attributes, and product positioning for our key consumer segments.
We use these insights to drive decisions across the organization,
from product design to buying and planning to marketing.”
Consumer Products
InsightSuite/CP (consumer products) enables consumer goods
companies to reduce the risk and increase the success rate of new
product introductions quickly, providing feedback from hundreds or
thousands of respondents in 24-48 hours. Predictive analytics
deliver actionable data across dozens of attributes in real time.
InsightSuite/CP is faster, more scalable and more predictive than
traditional consumer research approaches such as conjoint
analysis.
John Herman, EVP and GM North America at Nutrabolt, commented:
“As a fast-growing nutritional supplements company, Nutrabolt is
focused not only on getting the product right, but on making sure
we have the right packaging, labeling and pricing. Also, since our
products are offered through multiple channels, we need data to
understand which products should be offered through which retailers
and at what prices. First Insight’s platform helps us answer these
questions quickly and accurately. Using First Insight, within 24
hours, we have actionable data from our customers - as well as from
those who are not yet our customers – on the optimal messaging,
packaging and pricing – all segmented by retail channel. This has
helped generate measurable gains in sales and margins.”
In addition to Nutrabolt, customers now using InsightSuite/CP
include drinkware companies such as Tervis, restaurants, gift
companies and personal care products manufacturers.
Fast Fashion
Designed to meet the unique needs of fast fashion retailers,
InsightSuite/FF provides actionable data on a weekly cycle,
enabling retailers to read industry trends and test new styles with
consumers quickly so they can react in real time. The result is a
data-driven approach to identifying new designs, pricing items
correctly, and weighting buys – all compressed into a weekly
calendar. Fast fashion retailers often buy new styles from vendors
at market rather than developing products internally.
InsightSuite/FF lets them test products from these vendors with
speed and at scale.
Karen Pinney, Chief Merchant at rue21, one of the largest fast
fashion retailers in the U.S. with over 700 stores, said, “First
Insight is enabling us to test a wide range of possible new
products within 24 to 48 hours. This capability enables us to drive
speed to market with the right items, which is critical for a fast
fashion retailer. When compared to in-store testing, First Insight
is faster, more accurate and less costly because we avoid buying
unproductive store test inventory.”
Luxury
Luxury brands that traditionally based their strategies on
scarcity and on selling products at full price are also turning
their attention to managing inventory levels. Another challenge for
luxury brands is the confidential nature of new designs: while they
want customer feedback, they need to maintain confidentiality to
ensure next season’s designs are not copied by another brand.
InsightSuite/LX (luxury) enables luxury brands to get feedback
on new designs while maintaining confidentiality, and has proven to
deliver more full-price sales while reducing inventory levels for
many luxury brands.
“The John Hardy client is individualistically and artistically
expressive; it’s an attitude and way of wearing jewelry that is
growing in importance among our clients,” said Robert Hanson, CEO
of sustainable luxury jewelry company John Hardy. “First Insight
will enable us to get real-time client feedback to create and price
those one-of-a-kind authentic pieces that are the essence of the
John Hardy brand.”
Digitally Native
The challenge for digitally native brands is to find ways to
grow a business without a physical store footprint and with a small
but growing customer base. InsightSuite/DN enables these companies
to reach consumer groups that are not part of their current
database through integrated third party panels. Through a
wizard-based interface, designers and merchants in digitally native
brands can select a target audience and gain feedback from these
prospective consumer groups in real-time.
Digitally native brands currently using First Insight include
those in the apparel, footwear, jewelry and home categories.
About First Insight, Inc.
First Insight is the world’s leading customer-centric
merchandising platform that empowers retailers and brands to
incorporate the Voice of the Customer into the design, pricing,
planning, and marketing of new products. Through the use of online
consumer engagement, the First Insight solution gathers real-time
consumer data and applies predictive analytic models to create
actionable insights, which drive measurable value. Retailers,
manufacturers and brands use the First Insight solution to design,
select, price, plan and market the most profitable new products for
reduced markdown rates and improved sales, margins and inventory
turnover. Customers include some of world’s leading vertically
integrated brands, sporting goods companies, department stores,
mass merchant retailers and wholesalers. For further information,
please visit www.firstinsight.com.
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First InsightGretchen JezercSVP of
Marketinggretchen.jezerc@firstinsight.com
or
Media:Berns Communications Group, LLCStacy Berns/Michael
McMullan, 212-994-4660
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