The fashion business is heavily influenced by external factors. From the trend cycle to competitors within your segment, staying ahead of the curve is a huge challenge in the fashion industry. In this episode of the Fashion Merchandising: effective in-season management strategies, our retail experts coach you on how to conduct an effective competitor analysis using real-time data to accurately gain insights on market conditions and competitor’s assortment strategies.

Meet the speakers

Presented by Elaine Low and Aniq Wafi, we boiled down 40+ years of merchandising knowledge from global brands such as Chanel, Louis Vuitton, Topshop and more into a simple easy-to-follow 5 day series on in-season management strategies.

What you will learn from the webinar:

1. The importance of monitoring competition
2. The key elements of competitor analysis
3. How to carry out competitor analysis effectively – macro and micro view

Competitor analysis

Keeping an eye on the competition is crucial to understand market shifts, popular trends and consumer demands.

The key elements of comp shopping are:

• Market distribution – learn about competitors’ distribution channels and assess new channels
• Assortment mix – spot opportunities and gaps in segments or categories, identify competitors’ USPs
• Trends & Colours – study trend highlights and new arrivals
• Communications – review brand messaging, visual merchandising and marketing activities
• Pricing & Promotions – analyse pricing, alongside promotion mechanics

2 approaches of competitor analysis

An effective competitor analysis is always backed by data and starts with establishing a macro view at market level, before drilling down to the micro view analysis.

• Macro-view: Total sell-out performance by brand, full price vs. discounted contributions, median price and price spread

• Micro-view: Category analysis by new-in and replenished, bestsellers and slow sellers, pricing and discounting strategies, colour mixes

Macro View – Having a benchmark

It is important to study the sellout performance in the market to understand the sellout benchmark of competitors within your segment.

From there you can drilled down on the details of the assortment such as pricing, sub-categories and colours.

Data analysis