Retail trend forecasting - for eCommerce and retailers

Retail trend forecasting - for eCommerce and retailers

Table of contents

When it’s come to understanding your business the first and core thing is to understand your consumers/customers. While planning to start new clothing business manufacturing is the easiest thing but the most important thing before starting your company is to have market research about your targeted market, consumer’s lifestyle, and projection about your business.

 

The fashion business is the biggest global business which is the most competitive and volatile. Now consumer’s lifestyle is changing rapidly thanks to technology and media, that’s why it’s very important to nab consumer’s demands against your current offering. Failing to understand consumers are risking your business.

 

How to track consumer’s demand- Before tracking consumer’s demand it’s very important to understand who your consumer is, whom we are going to sell. We need to slim down to a specific consumer based on age-gender-place and ethnicity. Let’s suppose we are planning to manufacture tops, pants, jeans, etc. targeting female 16-30 age group customers living in rural shall be different than the customer living in an urban area.

 

The prints, the silhouettes, the colors shall be different for different consumer groups based on demographic data. But this is not everything. We need to keep on tracking the trend accelerators, the catalysts which are affecting the lifestyle of our targeted consumers.

 

Designers usually start conceptualizing products for a new season one year before the actual selling season. Therefore, for apparel retailers, knowing what customers will want to wear next season is much more than just helpful information—it is requisite for success. When apparel retailers recognize fashion trends and develop their merchandise based on that information, they increase the probability that consumers will accept merchandise when it arrives in stores that's why retail trend forecasting is very important

 

How Trend evolves and fades

 

New fashions have been continuously created throughout history. Although new fashions are considered to be innovations, most of them are not greatly different from existing fashions and are modifications of previous ones (i.e., continuous innovations). Therefore, many new fashions tend to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary For example, skinny jeans were introduced in the mid-2000s and became narrower throughout the late 2000s, including evolving into skin-tight denim leggings that use stretch fabrics by 2009.

Whereas most innovations have evolved from past styles, there have been some exceptions, generally led by major social or world events, such as the end of World War II. After World War II, Christian Dior’s New Look typified a revolutionary change from masculine, square-cut wartime suits for women to billowy-skirted, hourglass-shaped dresses. This radical change reflected the desire to return to traditional roles for men and women. Women were no longer needed in factories because men were back from the war to fill the positions. Also, the fuller cut of the new look was possible because the fabric was no longer in short supply because so much of it was used in the war effort. The new trend is inspired and affected by music, art, street, technology economic, cultural events, etc.

 

The retail market requires short term retail trend mini forecast 

Since the current retail market is dependent upon vendors, outsourcing, we need to select our assortment which is based on the current market trend. Sometimes we are unable to fulfill our customer's demand due to wrong assortment filling, inaccurate trend forecast, which causes us great loss, customer loyalty, and sales drop. Retail Trend forecasting comes into great play to help you understand the current market trend against the current offering

 

How F-Trend helps 

  • Plan assortment based on targeted consumers based on location, age group, and price based breakups
  • We define key Items like color, silhouettes, and prints
  • We help you to understand your market, customer lifestyle changes based on the seasonal market offering
  • We validate your current assortment based on consumer’s demand