Data analytics with drag & drop ease

Lift12, a Singapore-based fashion company, aspires to be as successful as Zara. Just over a year in operations, Lift12 has already established a foothold in China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand, and it plans to expand into the Australian market.

Although data analytics is seldom associated with the fashion industry, the team at Lift12 is bucking the trend to find innovative ways to combine the two – utilising data analytics to determine customer preferences and industry trends and drive towards customer satisfaction.

To gain insights into customer preferences and accurately predict industry trends, Lift12 monitors customer comments and responses on social media. It then taps online voting tools to gain an understanding of customer likes and dislikes.

All this translates into over 17GB of data from various sources, including customer purchase history, social media and other information on the Internet. The data includes pertinent information such as colour preferences and trends, the latest fashion styles and most preferred methods of payment.

With the insights gained, Lift12 is able to combine the information with customer purchase history to refine and offer customers personalised fashion options. Lift12 also utilises its data tools to accurately keep track of inventory levels, ensuring that products are never out-of-stock.

Lift12 says the customer data offers valuable insights into different areas of customer needs, and when pieced together, helps the company to form a broad picture of the direction of the fashion industry.

“By combining the information that we have with other data that is readily available on the Internet, such as colour preferences and prices, we can react quickly to new trends in order to meet the ever-changing needs of our customers,” explained Andrew Wolf, co-founder and creative director at Lift12.

From 2 weeks to 30 minutes

Lift12 used to take two weeks to analyse the data that has been collected because the data came in multiple formats, which required different programs to run and interpret before being fed into the system. To be up-to-speed with the fast-paced fashion industry, Lift12 has adopted Tableau Desktop, an intuitive data analysis tool that allows drag-and-drop capability. The user-friendly software has significantly reduced the time taken for data analysis.

“With Tableau Software, analysis that used to take us two weeks is now cut down to just 30 minutes,” said Wolf.

Tableau’s capability to accept multiple data formats allows for information, such as customer purchase history, apparel trends and sales reports, to be fed directly into the system, enabling the rapid production of visualisations that are up-to-date and easy to comprehend.

“Time is money in the vibrant and changing landscape of the fashion industry. The ability to predict trends and make informed decisions, such as when to discontinue a product line and how much to stock in our various channels, could mean huge savings and profits,” Wolf said