Interest is rising in business intelligence applications, and when it comes to putting big data to use, the retail industry is fair game, especially this time of year.  An Aberdeen Group Business Intelligence Senior Research Analyst David White recently released the report Agile BI: Complementing Traditional BI to Address the Shrinking Decision-Window.  The study examined how business groups are abandoning traditional business intelligence approaches and are opting for either a mix of traditional with new BI tools or solely using new visual and interactive BI tools.  The reason for doing so is that businesses are seeing the rapid increase in fresh data, and they need to accommodate this in order to properly run their business.

Enter wonderMode, a high-end curated, fashion-focused marketplace for new and established fashion designers.  Here they can promote, sell and build their brands online. Founded by former Playboy Senior VP, Creative Director, Global Licensing, Aaron Duncan, wonderMode launched from beta with new features developed to help designers build their brands online.  wonderMode launched with a selection of nearly 100 designers representing 13 countries, offering close to 1,000 styles of apparel and accessories.  The site provides an easy-to-use platform that enables independent designers to market to new audiences and gives consumers access to a global selection of high-end merchandise.

“Designers who have been searching for an easy-to-use, low-cost platform for selling, promoting and marketing their styles have finally found their home – wonderMode was created with designers top-of-mind,” says Duncan.

“But, it’s really the consumers that will benefit from this global design space and community. We’re already featuring NYC-based designer Gemma Kahng’s new line Gemma by Gemma, a wonderMode exclusive, Dubai-based Rana Jamshed’s Polka Dot Cat label and rising Australian star designer Lui Hon, proving that wonderMode’s unprecedented turnkey solutions work for designers and global designs for consumers.”

wonderMode’s platform was developed to give designers access to the ecommerce tools they need to make their business a success and increase global visibility. Duncan, a former designer and branding strategist, wanted to establish a “fashion-safe” site that could act as a marketing vehicle for designers who otherwise may not have the time or knowledge to support those efforts independently.  The site provides full-service back-end technical solutions to support the designers, including features from lookbook creation and transaction details to branded packaging and shipping.  wonderMode simplifies the process, never holding inventory, and allows designers to ship orders directly to customers.

Designers apply for inclusion in the global design community by uploading four to five designs and providing basic background information on themselves and their brand. Select Advisory Board members are involved in the application review process including designer Eudon Choi, Calypso Retail Division Managing Director Nathalie Sears, former Diane Von Furstenberg VP of E-Commerce Ronit Weinberg and GMM of Urban Outfitters Terence Bogan. Once approved, designers set up a personalized wonderMode brand shop called a “Designer Space.” From inside this online store, designers can manage their style details, lookbooks, color palettes and inventory. In addition to availability in designers’ brand shops, each product is also offered by category on wonderMode’s main page, further increasing exposure.

Designers pay a nominal fee for presence and exposure on wonderMode – just 50 cents per style for four months and four images. The new “Key Items” feature allows designers to pay for increased exposure on wonderMode’s homepage for seven dollars per week. wonderMode retains 20 percent of total retail sales, excluding tax and shipping. The site also offers professional photography services, payment and logistics fulfillment, CRM, analytics, social media publishing and online advertisement support.

“Buying” big data

It’s the analytics that really bring a level of pragmatism to designers using the site, starting with a marketing and analytics platform first.  This is another example of big data being applied to an industry, finding its way to consumers in a self-learning system.

“wonderMode’s full service platform offers a simple and seamless selling and buying path for designers and consumers. For designers, wonderMode offers a turnkey service with built-in logistics tools such as automated shipping labels and order fulfillment, which are integrated into the platform,” says Duncan.

“In addition, wondermode provides designers with built in analytics tools through easy-to-read graphs so they can analyze traffic and sales patterns within their personalized Designer Space. Designers use this intelligence to map out the growth trajectory of their brand and base decisions on how and when to leverage new styles to their customers base for maximum sales and exposure.”

But wonderMode appeals to consumers, too.  For those looking to discover and shop independent and unique brands from global designers, its unique user interface also allows shoppers to connect directly with designers.  Shoppers can save their favorite designs on the site and share top picks via Facebook, Twitter and email.

Blowout big data

This increase in fresh data output is the reason why companies like eXant UK Ltd, the group that brought eXant BI, which is a fast ROI Business Intelligence application that allows business managers to access data from multiple databases, sort, structure, collate and deliver the information through dashboards and reports securely to their management team, offering full drill down capabilities, for a fraction of the cost of similar products.

eXant just launched eXant BI Product Exporter V1.3 which is specifically designed to provide a highly flexible, low infrastructure overhead, BI tool that is highly intuitive in use and can be deployed rapidly by organisations requiring data manipulation tools and detailed analysis of their information and data systems following systems integration.