MakerSights Launches Product Intelligence Platform; First-Ever Tool To Bring Data Science To Product Decisions

SAN FRANCISCO, March 20, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- MakerSights today announced the launch of its platform, enabling consumer brands to harness data science to elevate the artistry of their product design and development. By inviting customers to weigh in on future products and applying proprietary predictive analytics to their feedback, the MakerSights product intelligence platform helps brand partners develop more accurate sales plans, de-risk new product introductions and measure how customers respond to product attributes like fabrics, colors and price – all within minutes.

Leading brands like Ralph Lauren, Lucky Brand, Taylor Stitch, Sperry, Merrell, MM.LaFleur, True Religion and Rhone are already using MakerSights to make faster, more informed and ultimately more profitable product investments, all while engaging their customers in the process.

"At Ralph Lauren, we truly value the voice of our customer," said Bryan Fogg, Vice President, Global Customer Intelligence & Experience Management. "MakerSights allows us to better understand how design details and product attributes resonate with our customers to help inform our product decision making. Our goal is to create products our customers love, and MakerSights helps us to do that with more confidence by engaging our customers directly."

"Since our founding at MM.LaFleur we have always done things differently, from rethinking our product development process to how we sell clothes to professional women," said Sarah LaFleur, CEO, MM.LaFleur. "Incorporating insights from MakerSights is another way we are approaching retail differently. By understanding customer preference even before we go into production, we can more confidently and quickly make difficult decisions on pricing and how deeply to go into a new product."

"Customer centricity and faster speed-to-market are two of Lucky Brand's most important strategies," said Lucky Brand CEO, Carlos Alberini. "MakerSights has been a critical component of driving these strategies forard. The 24-hour testing timeline enables our merchants to make quick data-informed decisions vs. the lengthier traditional in-store testing methodology. By enabling our business to implement data-driven product testing, we are also able to better understand our customers and invest in winning products. We look forward to continuing to partner with MakerSights and their nimble and hands-on approach."

MakerSights has analyzed more than one million structured product evaluations from customers, which its machine-learning platform pairs with actual sales data to improve predictive accuracy with every tested product. Early MakerSights partners have seen substantial improvements in their ability to forecast demand for products, all while activating customers and powering highly targeted messaging:

• By minimizing markdowns and doubling down on their biggest winners based on learnings from MakerSights, brands typically see a 2-4% gross margin lift
• MakerSights' predictive algorithms forecast future product sales with 90% accuracy
• 98% of customers who engage with MakerSights say they want to give feedback through the platform again in the future
• Customers that brands engage using MakerSights go on to purchase at rates that are 2x higher than control groups

"The shifting winds in retail are forcing brands to rethink how they operate," said Dan Leahy, CEO at MakerSights. "Customer expectations of immediacy are leading to dramatically condensed production schedules, and brands must satisfy an increasingly savvy customer who can buy any product from nearly any brand in the world with a click of a mouse. To succeed in this challenging environment, the most important asset that brands should be leveraging is their own customer, but existing methods of getting insights from customers are slow and expensive. At MakerSights, our reason for being is to give our partners the absolute best chance of succeeding in this new era of retail. We help brands harness the power of data science and the voice of their customers to provide every possible advantage to their creative talent, allowing their teams to confidently invest their time and resources toward developing products that people love."

ABOUT MAKERSIGHTS

Founded in 2015, MakerSights helps retail brands make more informed product decisions with customer insights and actionable data while engaging the customer and building their connection to the brand.

With over 90% accuracy in predicting winning and losing products, MakerSights quickly provides data to support major decisions across the production cycle, from product concepting through launch, and even hindsighting. Customers include Ralph Lauren, Taylor Stitch, MM.LaFleur, True Religion Apparel, Rhone, Wolverine Worldwide, and Lucky Brand. The MakerSights team combines retail industry veterans who understand the unique challenges faced by retailers, and consumer internet entrepreneurs with experience building platforms to engage millions of customers. MakerSights has financial backing from leading executives behind today's biggest retail and software companies including Oracle, Warby Parker, Birchbox, the Arrivals, and Bobbi Brown, among others. MakerSights works with customers across apparel, accessories, footwear, beauty, home and lifestyle. For more information, please visit makersights.com.

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SOURCE MakerSights

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