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LAS VEGAS – IBM announced a collaborative arrangement with LabelSneak, a small online retailer of discounted designer menswear that is using IBM Smarter Commerce technologies to create unique shopping experiences aimed at the millennial consumer.
Essentially, LabelSneak is using big data to glean insight into what millennial men are looking for in terms of clothing, and the company has seen 148 percent growth in its revenue, tripling its sales in less than one year since beginning to work with IBM’s technology. IBM made this announcement at the IBM PartnerWorld Leadership Conference 2013 here, where big data was the theme of the day.
LabelSneak used IBM’s technology to learn what consumers were saying about the clothier’s latest promotions, which items were most popular at what time and when sales were most effective. LabelSneak also needed analytics to better target and mold online sales campaigns and to decide which social channels best communicated its message to attract new customers.
“With consumer behavior so volatile, marketers need to know what consumers want, before the consumers do themselves,” said Ade Shannon, CEO of LabelSneak, in a blog post about his company’s work with IBM. “Besides analyzing their own data to learn how they have performed in the past, businesses need to be able to look forward and change before the market does.”
LabelSneak is an outlet store aimed at brand-aware young men offering discounts of up to 75 percent on fashion and sportswear. The company alerts consumers via social channels to personalized, limited-time sales offers. And with new deals regularly updated, the site generates large amounts of data such as tweets that include Instagram photos, Facebook comments on the most popular sales items and conversations between consumers on favorite brands through social channels, mobile and tablet devices.
“Understanding what resonates well with millennial consumers brings insight and impact into our ability to offer the right items and to create the right promotions at the right time, and enables us to break through to this challenging and influential millennial segment,” Shannon said in a statement. “Social media is a consistent part of this segment’s daily life and is a viable and valuable way to connect with them. The collaboration with IBM and CSI’s RapidCommerce Solution is providing us the foundation to capture these insights, to anticipate consumer demand and to design a scalable platform as our business continues to grow.”
LabelSneak teamed with IBM and IBM’s business partner CSI Solution to connect with the growing marketplace of consumers who prefer to buy across online, mobile and social channels. With access to IBM Global Financing within minutes, the small retailer is using IBM Smarter Commerce technology to handle high volumes of transactions as well as the large volumes and variety of data.
IBM Smarter Commerce Gives LabelSneak Big Data Boost
CSI’s RapidCommerce cloud managed service solution has helped LabelSneak create a site to more effectively target the digital savvy millennial consumer with an integrated brand experience across all devices. To date, the platform is supporting a rapid pace of growth, enabling the client to focus its time and resources on growing the business such as conducting sales promotions, gleaning insights from Facebook comments or tweets.
“Applying big data analytics can help small retailers track and understand what’s being said out there,” Shannon said in his post. “But the leap in value comes when they combine this intelligence with theirs and other data sources in a meaningful way, to mute the social data noise from the valuable insights and move their business forward.”
Fashion companies of every size and style are vying for a slice of the men’s wear market. To compete with more established retailer brands, LabelSneak needed to better understand men’s online consumer behavior, create a more tailored marketing campaign and deliver the right merchandising mix. Not only is LabelSneak gleaning insights from data analyzing which brands to carry, but they also are seeing how consumer preferences for certain brands in men’s wear are connected to favorite sports teams or music.
IBM Smarter Commerce marketing is enabling consumers to choose which sales promotions they want to be alerted to or when their favorite clothing item goes on sale via text, tweet, Facebook post or email. This can be a more effective sales method as smaller retailers can deliver a level of personalization and a more tailored marketing campaign to the individual consumer, IBM said.
“By 2020, big data will help increase the level of personalization, localization and other considerations that enable small businesses to enhance their presentation,” Shannon said. “Take, for example, social shopping: consumers involve friends and others, sharing and liking real-time text and photo streams during the shopping experience, and perhaps driving these participants to buy. Big data also is driving automation, creating a wealth of new smart apps and technologies able to anticipate our needs. Or it’s prompting issue-influenced decisions, where consumers consider sustainability or conservation as part of their purchase decision process.”
Moreover, Shannon said the technologies to achieve these goals for small businesses are available and more affordable than most small businesses expect. Yet, “What’s required are the smarts: knowing which questions to ask of the data and how the organization can best use what it finds. Understanding the value of big data is generating increasing demand among small businesses for insight on how to better understand and connect with consumers.”
IBM Smarter Commerce provides intelligent automation of marketing, sales, customer service and procurement to help chief marketing officers, chief procurement officers, sales, e-commerce, supply chain and customer service executives do their jobs more productively and efficiently, IBM said.