Fashion: creativity or mathematics? – MK

Remember the monologue about the blue sweater that Meryl Streep’s character delivers in The Devil Wears Prada? “And although you believe that the choice you make demonstrates your independence from fashion, in fact you are wearing a sweater that was chosen for you by the people in this very room…” Fashion combines high art and precise mathematics. Shopping Live CEO Maria Ostrovskaya reflects on how these polar entities coexist within the clothing industry.

Emotions or numbers?

When I say that fashion is emotions, they look at me with surprise. Isn’t it a basic need to cover your nakedness and stay warm? But according to research, at least 50% of women make decisions about purchasing clothes, shoes and cosmetics based on purely emotional motives, otherwise there would be no billionaires and super profits in this industry on a par with pharmaceuticals or financial services. The well-known shopaholism is nothing more than a way to please yourself and relieve stress. The best designers work on this same emotional level.

At the top of the funnel, however, numbers rule. Because we all obey certain logical laws. And three years ago we decided to monitor this process and took full control of it. Now the share of sales of own brands is 80%.

When I’m looking for a good buyer, I always check his analytical skills first. The combination of creativity and systematic intelligence in one person is extremely rare – to continue the well-known metaphor, few people have both hemispheres working. And in this case, I would rather prefer numbers and logic, and leave the creativity to the designer.

Math first

The best planning practices were created by American retail. We always start any action from the top. The first thing we always do is decide on the goals: gross and net revenue, gross margin, product turnover – this is what merchandising planning and buyers are responsible for. And for the efficiency of operating expenses and operating profit – good financiers.

Let’s break the whole into parts and look at the relationships between them. A very important and often underestimated part is the product hierarchy. Significant changes in it rarely occur. The share of knitted tops may rise or fall a few percentage points, but rarely changes dramatically.

At the same time, the product hierarchy in planning and on the website can be fundamentally different. The first is from the field of statistics, the second is from buyer psychology. The next stage is working with the distribution of goals across the product hierarchy, as well as across distribution channels (stores, online). And here we apply a double check: from the target down, and then from historical data on trends – up to the target. And we never forget about the key indicators of horizontal lines: gross and net revenue, planned discounts and markdowns, initial and actual margins, sales from purchases, turnover, etc.

Then creativity

The next stage is from mathematics to creativity. An important feature is an attribute. This is a series of properties or details that the buyer sees and thanks to which one model is distinguished from another. For example, the attributes of a group of dresses can be both general characteristics such as seasonality and price level, as well as more specific properties – length (mini, maxi), silhouette (fitted, A-line, etc.).

The more accurately the attribute matrix is ​​distributed, the higher the likelihood of obtaining the target results. Therefore, first we receive a matrix for each product group, and only then does it go to the designers for work, and collections are created on its basis.

Without such careful and systematic merchandising planning, not a single large fashion company operates. The basis of any creativity ultimately lies in a clear mathematical calculation. Emotions are emotions, but the designer’s work is always framed in the form of specific requests – thanks to mathematics, he better understands the very pains and needs of the client. So fashion is not creativity or mathematics. This is creativity and mathematics.