Data and Design: Predicting the Trends of Today

One of the biggest challenges for any apparel retailer — or the design teams that are behind the products on its shelves — is staying in tune with the current trends so that it can provide the items and styles that their customers want.

Without that knowledge of the market and trends dominating it, retailers could end up with a store full of items that simply nobody is buying.

In the past, staying in tune with the trends often came down to being personally immersed in the market to get a sense of trends. However, this comes with a lack of accuracy and doesn't leave retailers with true answers as to why a product succeeded or, more importantly, why it failed.

The other major method of the past was employing research teams to study the market trends. This approach comes with massive costs in terms of both time and money.

For one, the costs of employing a research team, temporarily or full-time, is a large financial commitment, and one that simply is not necessary for many modern apparel retailers and how they're able to operate in today's retail landscape.

Secondly, for online apparel retailers that don’t have a physical store and are able to switch up their entire line of products available for sale at the click of a button (OK, maybe more than just one button click … ), the agility they need to pivot to any quickly shifting market trends simply doesn't exist within the trend research methods of the past. This need for agility is even more pronounced for print-on-demand retailers, whose business relies on having the hottest design trends of the day on display (in-store or online) for their customers to choose from, and often are changing what those designs on display are on a weekly or even daily basis.

This is where the role of data and technology within the modern apparel retail landscape come into play.

While so many trending designs of the past were born purely of artistic instinct, in the modern age, technology plays a vital role in predicting the design trends that will resonate with consumers.

By employing a data-driven design engine — powered by the analysis of global fashion trends, search trends, download transactions, and subscriber requests — apparel retailers can leverage the added visibility and insight into the market and the trends driving it that today’s innovative, data-driven design engines can provide, and truly pinpoint the images and designs that will resonate with consumers and succeed as trending products.

By doing so with a data-driven design engine, and without the need for costly and time-consuming market research teams, apparel retailers can provide the trending designs their customers want, all while saving themselves a significant amount of time and money.

Without a data-driven design engine, apparel retailers, and especially online sellers and print-on-demand sellers, will find themselves far behind the market trends and playing catch up to their competitors to provide the hottest design trends to their customers.

Matias Colotuzzo is the CEO of Vexels, a business focused on developing the perfect digital design experience for creatives, sellers, and innovating companies.