What reaches an apparel board
Growth stalled by reach, with the brand known to the people who already buy it and to nobody else. Growth stalled by proposition, with a range the customer cannot tell apart from three others. Operating and marketing costs returning less each season than the season before. International demand visible in the analytics and served by nothing. A channel that grew on promotion and cannot see how to grow without it. Which of these is binding is not decided in advance. The Cat’s Whiskers determines it, and the Review reports what it found, not what it expected.
How the Review reads it
The Review walks the proposition the way a customer does: the first search, the landing, the product page, the basket, the checkout, the parcel, the return. It is measured against traffic, conversion, order value, margin and repeat, and checked against all seven foundations of the Cat’s Whiskers. It resolves to the one constraint that is actually binding in this business, which is rarely the one the room arrived with.
The record behind it
Early senior ecommerce roles at a fashion business that grew into one of the UK’s biggest online retailers, at 120% year-on-year growth, with the first enterprise replatform and two appearances in Vogue’s 100 Most Influential in Online Fashion. An earlier apparel retailer from the same era. The UK’s largest footwear brand by volume, taking its US launch to profitability inside three months. A British heritage brand’s first standalone global ecommerce director: the full-price transition held against promotional dependency, over 50% growth across priority international markets, profit contribution up 60% on a flat marketing budget, organic search from 15% to over 30%, repeat purchase from 1.3 to 1.6 a year, five-year targets delivered in two. In the Gulf, the franchise ecommerce operations of a portfolio of six international apparel brands. As a consultant, a replatform for a UK apparel retailer through a digital consultancy and a private engagement for a womenswear retailer. Markets: UK, EU, US and GCC.
Who this is for