The Challenge

SAE-A started in 1986 as a family-owned company in Korea. The company’s operations have grown to be global in scope, with manufacturing facilities from Vietnam to Guatemala, and offices from Korea to the United States.

SAE-A’s fast pace of growth spurred the company to focus on understanding their key markets more deeply, in order to increase sales with existing customers as well as win new customers. The company was also increasingly called upon to provide guidance on global trends and make product recommendations to support their US apparel customers. Being asked by their retail customers to find white space opportunities in the market also meant that the design and product development teams had to quickly broaden their knowledge of global markets. SAE-A needed a comprehensive and trustworthy source of data to be able to meet their customers’ demands and also to increase order volume and sales with US customers.

The Solution

EDITED Market™ and EDITED Research™ including Retail, Runway, and Runway Collection reports support SAE-A in having global market and trend data at their fingertips.

“EDITED did a lot for us in terms of Market Intelligence, as all of our retailers were asking for more and more market intelligence information. We used to do much of the market research and analysis ourselves, but when COVID-19 hit, there was no travel and it was difficult to get comparisons or do analysis in the USA as we were in Korea. Our retailers’ buyers could not see the market either. We got a lot of help in terms of resources from EDITED,” said Cindy Chang, Vice President of Product Development and Design.

The EDITED analyst reports combine years of industry experience with retail data to provide trustworthy and up-to-date trend reports that help pinpoint the right product, contextualize industry shifts and react quickly to opportunities in the market.

“The EDITED retail reports provide lots of insight on market trends. For example, the casual versus workwear report from early 2021 was very helpful to us in terms of fabric and style trends, and also gave us good ideas we could use to position product. Our retailers gave us a lot of positive feedback, “ said Esther Park, Team Manager, Ladies Design Team.

EDITED Market provides real time and historical product data on color, fabrication, macro- and micro-trends, and product performance data–new-in, replenishment and sell-out data–to identify top product movers. This data can be used to identify trends and analyze top moving products to develop and recommend to SAE-A customers.

SAE-A has been able to support their customers by using EDITED Market Intelligence data to let their customers know of potential white space in their products.

“EDITED’s information convinces our clients that they are on the right track, and our suggestions are valid since we back up our recommendations based on data. That is why we use EDITED,” said Esther Park, Team Manager, Ladies Design Team

The Results

SAE-A has also been able to save employee time by using EDITED data rather than manually visiting stores or browsing competitors’ and aspirational brands’ websites, one at a time.

“We create reports using EDITED’s data to use internally, but we can use this information to make suggestions to our clients, as well as to inform them, for example, if they want information on mass retailers on colors, products, pricing, and inventory. The EDITED data used in analysis gives the retailers confidence,” added Esther Park, Team Manager, Ladies Design Team

The EDITED data helps inform SAE-A’s buyers’ program planning through comprehensive reports that rationalize SAE-A’s recommendations and data that can support data-driven product development.

“If we suggest something, the retailer might select it and place an order. Our clients want us to show them things in case they’re missing something. If yes, that would spark them to order product, as that would be the white space they want us to provide for them. Our analyses based on EDITED data have the potential to shift orders and upsell with our retail partners,” stated Cindy Chang, VP of Product Development and Design.