SAN FRANCISCO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--MakerSights, the only Voice of Consumer platform purpose-built for apparel, footwear, and accessories brands, continues to grow its customer base in Europe with the addition of GANT, ODLO, and Orlebar Brown. This news comes on the heels of Garmont International choosing MakerSights to inform its product strategy and optimize assortments.
“Shifting to a strategy that is centered around the consumer is about more than just increasing revenue – it’s about growth and sustainability,” says MakerSights Co-founder and CEO Dan Leahy. “Our customers in Europe are leading the market when it comes to embracing new technology, digitizing processes, and leveraging consumer data to deliver tight, highly-productive assortments that drive more revenue while reducing waste. We’re excited to be working with these forward-thinking brands and for the opportunity to demonstrate the value that the MakerSights platform’s unprecedented speed and accuracy deliver when developing a clear consumer strategy, creating products people will love, and successfully bringing them to market – all while keeping the health of our planet in mind.”
New MakerSights Customers
GANT, the Sweden-based premium lifestyle brand known for pioneering the “preppy” American sportswear style since 1949, has engaged MakerSights to test products for both its men’s and women’s lines throughout the concept-to-consumer process. GANT will gather feedback from target consumers in its largest markets including China, Germany, and the UK to inform its product strategy and decisions regarding product details from colors, prints, and patterns to logo placement and size.
“At GANT we are driven by a simple idea: Never stop learning,” said GANT Global Planning and Merchandising Director Joanna Sjöberg. “Working with MakerSights allows us to do just that. Rather than just a few people in a room deciding which direction to take the line in next, we can now easily survey hundreds of target consumers and quickly understand what they’d like to see from GANT next so we can factor the voice of our consumers into decisions. From there, we can quickly focus our efforts, which will save us valuable time, energy, and resources.”
ODLO, the Norwegian-born, Swiss-based performance apparel brand that has won the ISPO Award for outstanding innovation eleven times, has turned to MakerSights as a foundational component of their new Voice of Consumer initiative. In the past, the ODLO team leaned heavily on historical data and internal expertise to guide new product decisions, but now recognizes the importance of consumer data and predictive analytics to gain a competitive advantage and remain agile, especially during times of economic uncertainty.
“We’re excited to have MakerSights take a lot of the guesswork out of our product creation process,” said ODLO Product Director Timo Pape. “Instead of merely relying on opinions and some historical sales data to plan our ranges and inform new products, we are looking forward to adding actual consumer insights and feedback into the decision-making process with the MakerSights platform. Being able to see product-specific feedback from hundreds of target consumers almost instantly will be instrumental in the evolution of our product and merchandising strategies, and driving alignment and buy-in with cross-functional stakeholders.”
Orlebar Brown, a London-based luxury swimwear and lifestyle brand, selected MakerSights to test their largest men’s categories, including shirts, swim, and polos, to ensure resonance with target consumers in the UK and the US before investment. The consumer testing program will kick off a review of existing products. The results from this test will be leveraged to rationalize and refine its current range across e-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores.
“OB was built around the voice of our customers,” said Orlebar Brown Merchandising and Trading Director Michael Weatherley. “MakerSights gives us the means to scale that practice well beyond the confines of one-to-one or even one-to-few conversations. Now we can hear from thousands of current and aspirational consumers in just a couple of days so we can quickly determine which styles will have the biggest impact on consumers and drive the most value for OB. That’s great for our brand and business, but it’s even better for our consumers.”
About MakerSights
MakerSights is the leading Voice of Consumer platform purpose-built for consumer insights and testing apparel, footwear, and accessories. Throughout the concept-to-consumer process – from driving category strategies to increasing SKU productivity and identifying new category investment opportunities – MakerSights empowers brands to make consumer data-informed decisions that improve margins, increase profitability, and reduce waste – wasted time, money, and valuable natural resources. The world’s most iconic brands, including Champion, GANT, and New Balance, use MakerSights to enable product creation, merchandising, and consumer insights teams to understand target consumers via easy-to-use dashboards and data analytics so they can create more products that people will love – and less of what they don’t. www.MakerSights.com.
