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MAY volume 55/number 9 contents COVERSTORY Apparel congratulates its 2014 Innovators for their moxie, creativity and good old-fashioned elbow grease — because, let’s face it, turning innovation into reality means getting your hands dirty! This year’s award winners moved the industry forward in a host of truly unique ways. BY JORDAN K. SPEER, JESSICA BINNS AND DEENA M. AMA TO-MCCOY Cover photography courtesy of Aeropostale Inc. INNOVATOR PAGE INNOVATOR PAGE adidas USA . .17 J. America Wholesale Blanks . .32 Aeropostale Inc. .37 J.C. Penney . .15 Bauer Performance Sports Ltd. 29 Junk Food Clothing . 20 Belk . .11 Kohl's . .35 Black Diamond Equipment . .27 Mamiye Brothers Inc. .35 Brooks Running . .22 Mitchells . .16 Buffalo Jeans Inc. .26 Nasty Gal . .34 Cobra Puma Golf . 14 Newtimes Group . 18 Eileen Fisher . .18 O'Neill (Part of LaJolla Group) . .9 Fannypants . 25 Ortiz Industry . .33 Fashion Avenue Sweater Knits . .24 Perform Group LLC . .28 Halston . 10 Sport Obermeyer . .36 Indochino . .30 U.S. Special Operations Command . .10 Industrial Revolution II . .12 WS & Co. .31 TOP INNOVATOR SPONSORS BY JORDAN K. SPEER, JESSICA BINNS AND DEENA M. AMATO-MCCOY Apparel congratulates its 2014 Innovators for their moxie, creativity and good old- fashioned elbow grease — because, let’s face it, turning innovation into reality means getting your hands dirty! This year’s award winners moved the industry forward in a host of truly unique ways. It’s all here: From a hoodie that doubles as a drink holder to yoga pants that address the challenge of a leaky bladder, from the power of an 18-year-old social media trendsetter to making inventory available across channels. With fast-paced advances in technology of all types, there’s never been a better time to push the limits of innovation. 8 MAY 2014 • www.apparelmag.com O’Neill Clothing (part of LaJolla Group) Irvine, Calif. | www.oneillclothing .com NOMINATED BY: Reflektion | www.reflektion.com t’s now a global beach lifestyle apparel company, but O’Neill of the increased relevance of the custom merchandised assort- IClothing hasn’t forgotten its small-store roots, which began ment, says Neukomm. in 1952 when Jack O’Neill first glued together pieces of neo- Results? An immediate uptick in revenue per visit, con- prene to make vests for surfers. The company’s goal is still the version rate, average order size and page views compared to same: to treat each customer who comes to its store — online traffic not going through the platform. “Overall engagement or to a brick-and-mortar retailer — as a unique individual, has improved by every traditional KPI,” says Neukomm. Take- with staff trained to pull together product assortments that home message? Digital channels as a whole need to be dynam- cater to their needs. ically customized, not just e-commerce. So, if you’re a guy or gal dropping in at Steamer Lane, (O’Neill has also used Reflektion to optimize its web site the most hazardous surfing spot in Santa Cruz, Calif., and you for mobile, a key channel for a company whose online cus- head into a store seeking the latest in performance board- tomers are typically 14-24 years old. Now, visits from any shorts, you’re going to find staff to assist you and be able to device offer a targeted shopping experience that is opti- go directly to the products you want. When you hop online, mized for the size and capabilities of its display.) you’d like to encounter the same. Based on initial positive results, O’Neill replaced its cat- “Unfortunately, we were limited in what we could do with egory pages with personalized product assortments, and the online experience,” says Daniel Neukomm, CEO of O’Neill. implemented Reflektion’s visual site search, which actively “We wanted to duplicate that store experience and offer engages shoppers with personalized product results while each visitor an individualized product assortment — one that they are typing. takes into account everything from the shopper’s own style to After a few months, the conversion rate had increased by how the temperature outside is going to affect what they 50 percent and, by the time the 2013 holiday season rolled will buy, whether it’s shorts or long-sleeved t-shirts. We needed around, O’Neill had placed 100 percent of its traffic through a way to gain that kind of insight into customers and prod- the platform. Neukomm says he was initially most amazed by uct trends online, without a large capital expenditure or a large how quickly the company implemented the tool (in just three investment of time.” days), allowing the company to better serve its online shop- In addition to better serving its online customers, the com- pers with targeted recommendations and dynamic dis- pany wanted to feed the insights gleaned from online inter- counting, but he is looking forward to how it will assist from actions into predictive analytics that could offer guidance on a line-planning perspective as well. After all, O'Neill is still emerging trends to retailers selling O’Neill’s products, predominantly a wholesale business. By matching data on which make up 90 percent of the company’s sales. product relevancy for consumer types to retailer profiles and Enter Reflektion, a technology company that helps com- the demographics they service, Neukomm hopes to help retail- panies detect trends and predicts in real-time what each ers tweak their buys to increase sell through. customer is most likely to buy next. In July 2013, O’Neill tested And beyond that? “Further down the road, we will be able the solution by sending 5 percent of its traffic through Reflek- to integrate predictive analytics gleaned from web traffic behav- tion’s predictive analytics platform to provide personalized ioral patterns and be able to capture the true value of web — product recommendations on product pages. which is how the other 97 percent of consumers that don’t It’s like having your own personal shopping assistant: convert behave — so that we can better support our traditional the solution uses data from each customer’s previous inter- wholesale business.” actions and combines it with demographic data such as cus- Neukomm says that even typically transactional tools, such tomer location, age, and prior purchases to formulate as search, can provide tremendous insight into product engage- recommendations. ment if enhanced by Reflektion’s machine-learning predic- That surf enthusiast headed to Santa Cruz? He’s going to tive dynamics. “This tool allows us to glean continually refined see board shorts, not the latest line of summer dresses, which insight on how various consumer types engage with multi- has made oneillclothing.com’s pages “more sticky” because ple product sets. This in turn helps us to better equip our retail- ers with guidance on merchandising assortments. O’Neill Clothing experienced an immediate uptick in revenue per “All very cool stuff,” he concludes. visit, conversion rate, average order size and page views when it started using personalization technology from Reflektion. — Jordan K. Speer www.apparelmag.com • MAY 2014 9 TOP INNOVATORS Halston New York, N.Y. | www.halston.com NOMINATED BY: RLM | www.ronlynn.com alston has come a long way since its Studio 54 heyday when holders which products have been selling well so far and sug- Hfounder Roy Halston Frowick’s fashions were de rigueur in gesting a replenishment order. 1970s discotheques. In 2013 the brand began opening a bevy of “RepSpark really helps to facilitate the discussion of the account,” brick-and-mortar stores, including a flagship on Madison Avenue, Timm says. “It’s easy to see different shots of each style, and if with plans to expand its physical presence. someone misses an appointment, the account exec can pre-lay Despite its move back into retail, Halston still looks to whole- out an order for the client, and say ‘Here are my recommenda- sale accounts for a significant share of its revenue. To that end, tions, what do you think?’” the company became the first apparel brand to integrate RLM’s RepSpark customer orders flow into RLM ERP where they ERP software with the RepSpark selling tool, which it used to man- are reviewed in a “relatively seamless process” before final approval. age all non-EDI-based wholesale orders. Interfaces between RLM This ensures that typos are caught and eliminated so that 1,000 and RepSpark ensure that customer master data as well as images units aren’t ordered when 20 were intended, Timm explains. are shared between the two systems. While integrating RepSpark with RLM ERP was fairly straight- Like many apparel brands, Halston operates on a wholly out- forward, says Timm, Halston encountered minor challenges along sourced model for all of its technology systems. RLM ERP enables the way. For example, Timm's team had to engineer some tweaks a consistent data model across different applications, and as Halston to ensure that when a product style is no longer available in RLM, transitioned onto the RLM platform by the end of 2011, the com- it also doesn't show up as a style option in RepSpark. pany wanted to take a long-term view of how data is structured. After years of integrating systems across the enterprise, Hal- “Our sales executives are able to work with accounts at spe- ston expects to reap the benefits of all of its hard work in 2014. cialty stores that may or may not come to market, as well as inter- “This year focus is on taking advantage of that integration and national distributors,” says Bryan Timm, COO, Halston. Describing determining how we can enhance processes to drive efficiency RepSpark as more of an auxiliary than primary tool, Timm notes and make better decisions,” says Timm.