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Stories

Stories

01 Dec 2014

Making Big Data Fashionable

Karen Moon (MBA 2008), Cofounder and CEO, Trendalytics
Re: Karen Moon (MBA 2008); Amy Jain (MBA 2010); Daniella Yacobovsky (MBA 2010); By: Christine Lejeune
Topics: Management-Management Analysis, Tools, and TechniquesMarkets-Demand and ConsumersFinance-RevenueMarketing-Social Marketing
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When it comes to marketing next season’s trends, the brightest fashion brains rely on more than just last year’s numbers. They also tap into their own innate, if unscientific, intuition—what Trendalytics’ Karen Moon (MBA 2008) calls “the art of fashion.” While much of the business world shies away from anything so unquantifiable as emotion, Moon values that intuition and wants to “help validate” it.

More Retail Revolutions

Speeding Up Accessories

BaubleBar cofounders Amy Jain and Daniella Yacobovsky (both MBA 2010) apply the popular “fast fashion” model to jewelry, streamlining production to get designs to consumers in as little as four weeks—and at an affordable price.

In 2012, Moon—who has a background in fashion design, investment banking, corporate strategy, and social commerce startups—launched Trendalytics, a visual analytics platform that mines online behavior to measure what styles are resonating with consumers.

By monitoring data such as social media chatter, shared images, and Google searches, Trendalytics can identify specific trends that a brand can then use to guide everything from the product mix to regional campaigns or to forecast whether skinny jeans or boyfriend jeans, for instance, will get more eyes on social media. For brands like red-carpet favorite Marchesa, it’s a useful new tool in that never-ending quest to predict what consumers want next week, next month, next season. It turns out there’s a science and an art to setting revenue-boosting trends.

Next: Ivy Ross (PMD 68, 1994) — Creating the Shopping Experience of the Future »

Return to Fashion's Retail Revolution main page «

 

To learn more about these seven HBS Alumni trendsetters, click on their photos below:


Marjorie Yang
Instilling Production with Principles
Instilling Production with Principles
 
Áslaug Magnúsdóttir
Customizing Couture Online
Customizing Couture Online
 
Jamal Motlagh
Taking Tailoring High Tech
Taking Tailoring High Tech
 
Katrina Lake
Dressing by Number
Dressing by Number
 
Karen Moon
Making Big Data Fashionable
Making Big Data Fashionable
 
Ivy Ross
Creating the Shopping Experience of the Future
Creating the Shopping Experience of the Future
 
Imran Amed
Rethinking the Fashion Beat
Rethinking the Fashion Beat
 
 
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Featured Alumni

Karen Moon
MBA 2008

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Featured Alumni

Karen Moon
MBA 2008

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