ATLANTA — Fashion players that fork over thousands of dollars a year to trend services have great expectations. They’re demanding — and getting — customized information that goes far beyond the latest colors and fabrics.
Hungry for knowledge but starved for time — like the customers they serve — fashion brands and retailers are commonly employing more than one trend service in order to build multifaceted information portfolios. Those super-charged databases encompass economic, cultural and social trends, as well as fashion direction, and are influencing decisions ranging from target demographics to product designs.
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A need to find hot ideas in a tepid business climate is compelling fashion firms to spend thousands of dollars a year to mine multiple trend spotters. Yet, even devotees of these consultants caution against an over-reliance on them and advise fashion marketers to balance those sources with their own gut instincts. Blind adherence to trend services can dilute a brand’s identity and create a sea of sameness, brand executives emphasized.
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Swimwear brand Speedo, for one, is grappling with such concerns. After increasing its budget for trend spotters in each of the past five years, Speedo at any one time uses up to five of them concurrently. Craig Brommers, Speedo’s vice president of marketing, said the brand filters advice from trend houses through its own executives, who retain veto power. In fact, the swimwear brand often passes on information common to several trend services, to avoid being part of the pack, Brommers noted. For example, Speedo is avoiding cherry prints and last season it steered clear of glitter.
“Cherry prints are a saturated look; we feel it’s old, even though some forecasters say it is hot,” Brommers related. “Although glitter and sparkle were hot last season, we felt it looks cheap.”
Currently, Speedo is taking trend direction from Milan-based Insolitu; SportScanINFO, in West Palm Beach, Fla.; Los Angeles-based Woolworks, and WGSN.com. “We need that many [trend services] for a diversified picture,” Brommers said. “We look at information on everything from new products to changing weather patterns.” For instance, a report on chlorine’s effect on swimwear degradation helped Speedo develop Endurance, a performance fabric it introduced this year.
Customized, diversified information is also essential for entities serving the fashion business, like AmericasMart, the Atlanta wholesale market center, catering to men’s, women’s and children’s apparel firms, among other industries. For about $10,000 a year, AmericasMart engages the Doneger Group. From a menu of services, Kaye Davis, the mart’s executive fashion director, finds information on the intricacies of fashion design. Research on hat styles and the demand for them, for example, spurred a fashion show coming up Jan. 31, called Vive la Difference. The event will spotlight an array of hats, from casual to dressy church styles, against a backdrop of music from a gospel choir.
In another vein, trend watchers helped AmericasMart plan urban market events, a growing part of its Atlanta Men’s Apparel Market, held four times a year. “We’ve learned many urban-market buyers don’t relate to traditional runway shows,” Davis said. Instead, the mart has staged events in clubs and restaurants.
Although they themselves are specialists, niche marketers rely on trend forecasters to unearth emerging categories that can be narrowly targeted. REI, a Kent, Wash.-based outdoor retailer with 70 stores nationwide, is a case in point. It is studying changes in consumers’ body proportions, with an eye on future sizing of its apparel and design of sleeping bags made with gender-specific proportions.
To boost its competitiveness with retailers such as Sports Authority and Lands’ End, REI has hiked its budget for trend houses in each of the past six years and will keep doing so, noted Carolyn McKernan, REI’s market research director. Although she declined to specify REI’s expenditures for those consultants, McKernan said about 10 percent of its marketing budget is devoted to trend research — but caps such spending at $10,000 annually.
REI expects trend houses like Leisure Time to respond in less than 48 hours to queries on everything from the impact of yoga’s proliferation to people’s preferences in jacket components for outdoor activities. Some sports, like snowboarding, are well researched, but McKernan cited a dearth of data on climbing, paddling and cross-country skiing.
Upon realizing it was being outgunned by the competition, about two years ago, White House/Black Market, a Baltimore-based specialty chain with 117 stores, enlisted trend forecasters. “We weren’t reacting fast enough to trends, because our buyers have so many responsibilities,” admitted senior vice president Patricia Darrow Smith. This past spring, White House/Black Market developed its own floral prints based on trends in styles, sizes and types of floral designs.
Like many fashion players, White House/Black Market uses a variety of trend watchers, including the Tobi Report and Here & There, both based in New York. “While around 80 percent of the trend services’ ideas are the same,” Smith said, “they all have different interpretations.”
And at REI, McKernan avoids getting too cozy with any one trend service to minimize the chances for competitors to benefit from trends REI perceives as proprietary. “We may mention an idea we have to a trend service and then they use it as their own — sort of letting the cat out of the bag,” McKernan maintained.