Selling men's luxury fashion accessories online offers the great advantage of knowing hour by hour what customers are seeking through the keywords they enter and the products that they eventually buy. This is market research in its most immediate form, real time and factual. We know what they are looking for, because they tell us without prompting and often in great detail. In fact we can analyse at the press of a button the average time a customer spends viewing a product, from this we deduce whether or not they are reading the product descriptions.
Having this kind of information at our fingertips means we adapt very quickly to customer demands, which can change as quickly and often as English skies. It's a bit like sailing into an unpredictable wind; you must tack quickly and often to avoid getting swamped or capsizing. We use this as a synonym to drive our motivation and team work, which includes close association with designer brands, who rely on our statistical data to aid their product design development.
It's all about supply and demand, giving the masses what they want and not telling them "you can have any colour tie as long as it's black" this mentality died with the model T Ford.
One recent example cited is the shifting trend in demand for cufflinks from novelty to classical. For industry members and designers this is like the relief of the first rain that broke a long draught. In the annals of cufflink history the 80s through has been formally classified as the whimsical era "once the novelty wears off"
We were able to identify the shifting trends and rapidly respond by featuring a range of classical cufflinks based on styles from the 70's and straight away met customer demand; suddenly we had a best seller on our hands. Thus adhering to the golden rule "supply and demand", we listen to our customers rather than dictate to them. We're not going to just sit around and hope customers will come knocking.
To abide, London Badge and Button were quick on the uptake; they released a small range silver cufflinks based on archived styles from the seventies. One in particular; using a slightly convex shape combing brushed and highly polished variants to imply depth and gold and silver to add interest. It turns out these delightfully simple numbers are a best seller. Lbb didn't want to thrash a dead horse so they employed two young energetic designers to combine economics and appeal. The result is a delightful range of cufflinks, even the sterling silver styles are affordable thanks to clever design and modern manufacturing technology.
Veritas Gifts never swayed from their classical roots; "What goes around comes around" style is constant, it's paid off. Their consistent best seller is the sterling silver "Bar Bell" and "Bell with Bar" Simple engraving maximises the use of texture giving relief to a very flat plane. It's often the subtleties in jewellery that take time to filter through, but they create the lasting impressions.
Working together with designer brands we are able to respond to changing customer demand thanks to internet technology.