Exiting department stores, reducing markdowns, and being comfortable limiting production on high-demand runway styles. New York designer label, Tibi, is rewriting the rules on what it means to forecast product assortments sustainably, accurately, and with intention.
“We have a clear point of view going into the purpose of each product,” said Elaine Chang, Tibi’s President, in an interview with Vogue Business discussing inventory supply and demand. “If we’re considering a runway style that pushes the envelope of creative storytelling, we may purposely buy it on a constrained basis.”
Founded in 1997 by Amy Smilovic, and a regular on the New York Fashion Week circuit, Tibi is a brand that has remained steadfast in the face of constant retail change. Their individuality-first ethos means they don’t succumb to the relentless trend cycle, instead conceiving their designs along the spectrums of creativity and pragmatism. “This compass means we are very clear on the ‘why’ behind our designs,” Elaine explained.
With fleeting trends and missed opportunities causing over- and understocking, one of the fashion industry’s biggest issues, we take a look at how Tibi rejects the trends to remain commercially sound, strategically in control of inventory levels, and true to its DNA.
Merchandising anchored in identity
Over the 14 years Elaine Chang has been with Tibi, the brand’s inventory approach has always been in sync with the brand’s development, and has constantly evolved with new technology phases and periods of great challenge.
“One of our principles is that we only create what we love – and it is therefore our job to share with others why we love it so that they will too,” she said. When Tibi’s product was sold through department stores, they found the inventory approach wasn’t aligning with this key guiding principle; they were constantly requested to include specific colorways and lengths on styles that did not align with the brand’s design. “Often, the consequence materialized in an end-of-season burden for Tibi.”
During the pandemic, the label reaffirmed its principles. It exited out of department stores completely, instead putting its resources into creating a wholesale footprint that helped to reinforce an already robust DTC business.
According to Chang, “Our buying and merchandising reflects a brand that is anchored in who it is, who it serves, and who it will become but always anchored to its core identity.”
Adapting to new technologies
With flagship stores and countless global stockists, since the pandemic, Tibi’s focus has been on balancing merchandise planning from the runway collections to satisfy both its DTC and wholesale customer bases. Having engaged Style Arcade’s intelligent retail software, the brand is now seeing the returns from the platform's automated sizing and demand forecasting tools.
When determining sizing quantities before Style Arcade, Karolina Kozlowska, Tibi’s Director of Planning, had been re-running size curves for every buy that involved not only collecting data, but checking data for accuracy and then configuring the data. With so many ERP and e-commerce platforms used by fashion brands without visual capabilities, the team knew of the risks of mislabeling historical products and ending up with inaccurate results.
“We now can easily pull truly comparable products (the comparability is determined by pictures, size convention filters, and AI image analysis) and size accordingly,” said Karolina. “This capability is not only a massive time saver but also delivers accuracy.”
Tibi also uses Style Arcade for demand forecasting, where they have seen improvement from assessing the platform’s True Rate of Sale metric.
“The True Rate of Sale considers how fast each size is selling,” explained Elaine. “Essentially, if you don’t buy enough of a specific size, you can’t meet the demand, and this metric corrects it. So, when we place replenishment stock, we can address the opportunity more accurately.”
Keeping data human
Tibi believes that creativity thrives when humans and a distinct point of view are the basis for all decision-making. This informs the company’s approach to data and its algorithmic applications, suggesting that a business should not be data-driven, “but data-smart.”
For Elaine, the value of software should span the spectrum of its ability for automation (with accuracy) and revelation. On the automation end, Elaine confirmed that Style Arcade has allowed Tibi to eliminate time spent on fundamental tasks of data collection and reporting, where the time is subsequently re-allocated to analysis, which is where the human input can start driving the decisions.
And the revelation end of the spectrum? “Style Arcade continues to put their resources into connecting the data dots in compelling ways that, coupled with the Tibi human layer, can lead to thinking in a different way that ideally leads to business impact.”
Read the full article on Fashion’s Secret to Meeting Demand on Vogue Business.
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