In the current throes of athletic and functional apparel, dresses have been forced to share the stage.
Recent industry headlines have expressed worry over a lack of new trends and subsequent hunt for signs that consumers have stopped buying clothes. Perhaps we’ve served consumers too many separates? Pants, tops and skirts, with their endless pairings, combinations and instant updates are an economical choice for consumers. But if it’s spend we’re seeking, as an entire look, the dress is a beacon of shining ‘buy-now-don’t-wear-forever’ light.
Ask the designers, fashion just isn’t fashion without a generous helping of dress. The resort collections currently being shown give dresses some serious airtime. At Dior this week, there were haphazard slips and a sleeved jolt of yellow silk Beyoncé could smash cars in. Louis Vuitton and Chanel added their regal seal of approval with short, silver and ruffled at the former and sporty and sequinned at the latter.
Right now dresses have a not-insignificant 21% share of women’s clothing categories worldwide. Separates haven’t exactly nudged them out of the market. It’s not all rosy however, 44.5% of dresses are currently discounted. In tops, the biggest women’s clothing category, product not only moves faster, but less of the offering is reduced.
Dresses make up a not-insignificant 21% of women’s clothing. Meet this season’s best-sellers.
Breathing new life into the dress category requires retailers to pay close attention to the market, detecting spikes in consumer interest and new product trends at their earliest instance. A good way to do that is to identify what we call ‘Top Movers’. They’re products which sell out at full price not long after hitting the market.
To cut to the real cream of the crop, we also look at items which get restocked too – a good sign the retailer knows demand isn’t slowing down. Our software makes doing this kind of data dig as easy as making a cup of tea.
Here are the six steps to finding the hits:
1. Open a new dashboard and define your market and region
We’re looking at the mass market in the US. You could always narrow the search right down and focus on a few specific retailers.
2. Drop in your category and select a gender
For this we’ve got ‘women’ and ‘dresses’ but you could analyze any category across clothing, footwear and accessories for men, women, girls or boys.
3. Define a time frame
Does new stuff sell super fast in your market, or does it stay relevant for the entire season? Based on your own criteria, set a timeframe that’s of interest to you. For this example, we’re looking at stuff that was new online in the last three months, and also sold out during that time.
4. Make sure it was a successful sell out
We’re looking for the retail hits, so weed out anything that sold out because it was reduced. To do that, set your filters to ‘Not Discounted’.
5. Sort by date
Check the products that search has returned. View them by ‘Date new in – newest to oldest’ and you’re looking at the hot property items which sold out in the least amount of time.
6. Cut to the winners
Want to view the leaders of the pack? Depending on what timeframe you’re viewing, there’s a good chance some of these Top Movers have also been replenished. Drop in a filter to see what’s not only arrived online and sold out at full price, but has also been replenished. A product view will show you how many times each item has been replenished.
And here they are! The hottest US dresses of the last three months.
Having that kind of information gives you options. Take a look at what sold well in the last month and figure out how that compares to your own offering. Are you market appropriate? Do you stock the right silhouettes, prints, colours and lengths compared to the leaders in your market?
Do you have a similar style in your offering to something that’s selling like hotcakes at a competitor? Action those promos or get content/marketing to ramp up your garment’s profile. And if you’re at the product development stage, map out how the category has evolved in the last six months and it could walk your right to the door of the next success.
Want to know more about how EDITED can help your business?
Request a live demo with one of our product specialists.
