Using sales data to drive decisions
Ethical activewear brand, Asquith
Asquith was in need of a better way to keep track of stock levels, hold less stock and make more profit. That’s the kind of challenge that retail merchandising was made for! From a meaningful product hierarchy to regular reporting and range planning, we helped Asquith get the best from its data.
Founded in 2002, Asquith is an ethical activewear brand with a focus on yoga and Pilates and a commitment to being kind to the planet. The business has grown over the years and now has a team based around the UK and Europe.
Challenge
Understanding how important data is to a retail business, but conscious that it wasn’t ‘her thing’, Founder and Creative Director Alice Asquith came to us for help.
She knew that she needed a better way to keep track of stock levels, keen to get to a place where Asquith held less stock and made more profit. We were up for the challenge! We headed in to help her plan the brand’s Autumn Winter range, with a view to showing what merchandising might be able to offer her.
Spoiler alert: it turned out that merchandising had a lot to offer.
Solution
Using Asquith’s existing data, we began by putting a meaningful product hierarchy in place so that we could analyse the data and give Alice a plan to buy to.
And then the pandemic hit.
Undeterred, we carried on, adjusting our ideas and reworking the AW plan. With that in place, we placed the orders, adding in some sizing analysis to potentialise the buys.
Seeing the value of merchandising, Alice asked us to help review her monthly sales performance so that we could suggest actions for products that weren't working as well as others.
Sale strategy
Through all this, we helped to drive out a new sale strategy for Asquith, protecting Alice’s profit and selling through her existing stock.
The SS sale was 15% more profitable as a result, as we worked on clearing old stock and the remaining seasonal product to make way for AW.
When AW came we could then drive more full-price sales (and therefore profit!), making it a healthy 25% more profitable for the brand than the previous year. It’s fair to say that we were all pretty pleased with that!
Reporting
We’ve now built Alice a reporting tool that turns her raw numbers into meaningful data.
Each month, we use this to send her a set of trading reports which keep an eye on how the brand is trading versus the plan, and give Alice actions to potentialise sales and minimise risk.
“Sarah is an absolute dream to work with. She’s fast, thorough, clear, has great energy and nothing is too much trouble. If I need sudden analysis, she does it.
Her reports are clear, accompanied by wonderful films to talk me through the data, as well as on the phone. And the results speak for themselves. I’ve gone from not knowing what a merchandiser really does to being unable to imagine my business without Sarah and Flourish.”
—ALICE ASQUITH, FOUNDER & CREATIVE DIRECTOR
There’s more though!
We love working on new ranges, so we looked at what works best for the brand (product types, prints, colours, price and new opportunities) so that Alice can firmly focus new products on exactly what the Asquith customer wants.
She benefits from creating a range that sells well, and the Asquith customer gets an amazing brand experience – everybody wins! And of course, the data we provide helps to show the context behind our recommendations.
We’re really excited to be by Alice’s side as her brand sets out on this journey of growth and can’t wait to see what the future holds…
