Introduction

Venus, a fashion company that has been around for almost 40 years, started as a body building swim company. Over the years, Venus has transitioned into the “ready to wear” space, targeting women ~55-60 years old.  

One of Venus’s current goals is to modernize its assortments and content. Historically, Venus has been very promotionally driven, but is shifting to focus more heavily on cohesive, digital storytelling to bring consumer moments to life. 

This modernization and effective communication will help with another company goal – providing relevant trends to Venus’s customers and simultaneously targeting a slightly younger audience. 

Life Before EDITED

Before partnering with EDITED, Venus faced significant challenges in tracking competitors’ communication strategies and keeping up with the ever-evolving fashion landscape. The team subscribed to a multitude of emails and SMS, which required laborious manual curation and analysis on a weekly basis. This process was time-consuming and hindered their ability to stay competitive and adapt to changing customer preferences.

Venus’s Director of Visual Merchandising, Laura Snell, explained: 

“It is so hard to fathom how we would have gotten to this point without EDITED. With EDITED, we have saved hours and days’ worth of time on competitive research that we now have at our fingertips.” 

With EDITED, Venus no longer has to subscribe to countless emails or manually sift through data. Instead, the team has access to pre-analyzed data that enables them to understand how other companies approach promotions, trends, and messaging, helping them make informed decisions around storytelling and assortments, as well as identify endless inspirational opportunities.   

Venus’s Transformation – A Modern and Cohesive Approach

Harnessing the power of EDITED with tools including EDITED Research™ and EDITED Messaging™, Venus transforms its business approach. Venus’s team uses these tools to craft more cohesive and modernized storytelling, impacting both its content and assortments. 

According to Snell, “In the past, our storytelling was not cohesive. Now, [with EDITED], we can plan our storytelling based on assortment, decide how long stories should live, and how to pulse things throughout the season. EDITED allows us to strategize and plan in a way that makes sense for our business.”  

Access to EDITED’s data enables Venus to identify who mentions trends first in the market, when they start talking about a trend, and what their messaging entails. Venus also utilizes the trend starter pack within EDITED Research to look up real-time and historical messaging to inform its strategies. 

Moreover, by leveraging keyword research within EDITED Messaging, Venus can precisely determine when to start discussing a trend and how long that conversation should continue. “My team owns the marketing calendar and is developing a season’s worth of information at a time, and having EDITED allows us to inject these key trends where relevant,” explains Snell. 

Common trends, such as wedding season, or certain collections, like faux leather, are key examples of where Venus pulls data from EDITED to make informed decisions about timing promotions, determining what to call something, or understanding how to tell a story around a trend/assortment in a way that appeals to the right audience.  

Faux leather is one example of a new trend Venus accessed with the help of EDITED. Previously, Venus did not realize its target audience would be interested in this trend. However, with data from EDITED, the team saw how they could adapt the trend and messaging to their audience.

 Starting in January 2023, Venus used this data to transform its strategy. Previously, the team would simply pulse messaging here and there around a trend. Now, with EDITED, they created a relevant content plan and developed a strategy of sending three customer emails per week to educate the audience and promote their collection.   

This moment was pivotal for Venus’s team.

Snell explains, “We thought our customer was behind on trends because of her age. Now, we have more knowledge on what’s trending [from EDITED], and we realized it wasn’t that she didn’t care about the trends; it was that we weren’t giving them to her.” 

Barbiecore: Utilizing EDITED to Build Venus’s Most Successful Collection Ever

Another standout example of the Venus team’s success with EDITED is the launch of its “Barbiecore” collection. Everyone remembers the flood of pink in retail ahead of Barbie coming to theaters, and thanks to data and insights from EDITED, Venus was able to capitalize on this trend quickly. 

Snell explains that the team was able to look at EDITED’s Barbicore trend starter pack report in July 2022 before they saw any competitive storytelling in the market. Because they had this information over a year before the movie was released in July 2023, they were able to start talking about Barbiecore in April 2023– before, or at the same time, as competitors, and three months before the movie – rather than seeing competitors in their market jump on this trend and having to play catch up while scrambling to get something out. 

“We had tons of clicks, tons of conversions, and tons of sell-through for this collection at a time when we really weren’t seeing that across the market.” 

– Laura Snell

With data from EDITED, Venus launched its Barbiecore assortment several months before the movie came out, helping push the brand in a trend-focused direction that is more relevant. 

Not only did EDITED’s data help propel the brand in a more trend-conscious direction, but it also influenced Venus’s featured products and storytelling. Rather than investing in entirely new products, Venus successfully used existing inventory to curate collections and related messaging around them, ultimately moving through previously slow turning inventory and resulting in higher sales. 

One such piece in this Barbiecore collection was a pink jacket. Venus already had this jacket, but brought on pink as a color add, relisted the jacket with cohesive Barbiecore messaging, and used it as the feature image for the collection. This product, initially expected to be available for 12 weeks, sold out within a week and a half, resulting in 100% full-price sell-through, which Snell says is “unheard of.” Generally, the team would see a full-price sell-through rate of closer to 50%. 

Venus ultimately restocked more of the product than it had previously and continues to see sell-through rates that are higher than ever before. Along with the pink jacket, other pieces that were average performers for Venus before, are now flying off the shelves. Snell shares that Barbiecore is still the highest-click collection on the site.  

Because Venus has access to trend reports and data from EDITED about what is going on in the market, the team is able to think through a strategy and create cohesive assortments and messaging that is modern, relevant, and customer-centric.    

Conclusion

Venus’s partnership with EDITED has had a transformative impact on its business strategy. Venus has transitioned from a non-cohesive promotional-driven approach to a more engaging, trend-conscious, and strategic direction. 

By utilizing the comprehensive insights provided by EDITED, Venus’s team has not only saved time, but also achieved remarkable success with some of their most successful campaigns to date. The ability to stay ahead of trends and deliver what its customers desire has allowed Venus to reach younger audiences and provide the trends their target audience craves.