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Love, Bonito uses data to develop actionable insights in fashion

STORE WATCH Love, Bonito uses data to develop actionable insights in fashion

The brand’s data strategy led to an 8% increase in its second purchase rate.

they should offer and how and when they should be released.

The company’s in-house design trackers, meanwhile, work with the designers to identify winning designs and gain insights from under-performers. “In the long run, we turn customer insights into actionable plans that drive the design process,” Leong said, adding that customer lifetime value over customer acquisition cost ratio increased seven times.

Love, Bonito turns customer insights into actionable plans that drive the design process (313 Love, Bonito store reopening. Photo courtesy of Love, Bonito)

In the past two years, Love, Bonito has been accurately forecasting the demands of its customers, with a monthly mean average percentage error of less than 10%. Because of this accuracy, the brand is able to prevent overproducing items and cut out underperforming products. This was all thanks to its established data team and infrastructure.

Love, Bonito’s in-house data team and infrastructure were established in 2019. It initially aimed to make analytics scalable and build a data culture within the company.

Now, its data team focuses on translating actionable insights from data, building automation and decision modelling to drive growth and efficiency across the organisation.

“This allows us to identify and recreate winning designs that customers love and at the same time, improve other designs based on customers’ likes and preferences. There are also plans to use data science and AI to enhance customer experience based on customers’

Data is knit into every part of our business

Dione Song

psychographics and shopping habits online and in-store,” CEO Dione Song told Retail Asia.

“It’s critical because it helps us make better decisions. Data is knit into every part of our business from understanding customer preferences and changing trends to driving efficiency in our inventory decisions and identifying new opportunities for our business,” Vice President of Data and Growth, Jane Leong added.

Data strategy

Love, Bonito uses both first-party data which include transaction, behavioural, and survey data collected from their platforms, and third-party data or industry and competitor research. It keeps track of over 100 product attributes per SKU and gathers information and feedback from customers.

The data team looks at various information which includes product attributes of popular designs, ways to maximise stock levels at each store and decisions to select what products

Trends and challenges

To date, Love, Bonito has 16 physical stores in Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Cambodia, and Indonesia and also ships to 20 countries worldwide. Even if the company started as an e-commerce business in 2010, it was still not spared from the supply disruption caused by the pandemic. Song, however, said that this presented an opportunity for Love, Bonito to recalibrate their omnichannel efforts to emphasise online versus in-store activations due to uncertainties in movement.

“Now, we’ve pivoted to designing home and comfort wear, such as our Staples (officially named The Staples) and Loungewear lines. We also started to incorporate workwear into our assortment a few months ago as safety measures have eased and we see more customers adapting to clothes needed for the hybrid work-home environment,” Song said.

Song said that whilst it is important to have channels and touchpoints needed to reach customers, it is also vital to be as “channel-agnostic, customer-centric, and hyperthoughtful as possible to go to where shoppers are,” noting that customers expect convenience and want connections and a sense of community. It is also important for brands to have an “authentic and clear purpose, and value system” as customers have become more discerning, especially the millennials and Gen Zs.

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