Zalora sets the standard for data-driven retail and powers new insights for brands

ZALORA is a leading online fashion destination where millions of customers across Asia can shop the more than 3,000 local brands. The "data first, then fashion" company relies heavily on Tableau dashboards and analytics to inform decisions about everything from marketing to merchandising and operations. Zalora also uses Tableau within Trender, an embedded analytics solution which reveals insights on consumer preferences and behavior.

Trender is designed for use by Zalora's brand partners and was released just in time to help them navigate COVID-19 by making data-driven decisions about how they market and merchandise products.

The value of Trender stems from Zalora's massive repository of trade data, including transaction data across six different markets. Combined with Tableau's visual analytics, this data reveals essential trends in customer behavior, like which age groups and regions are shopping most and which product categories are most popular. Brands can use this information to shape their retail strategies for online and in-store.

Specifically, marketers can obtain an in-depth understanding of consumer segments and purchasing behavior to streamline their efforts on targeting the right audience, while designers can gain insights into trending colors, materials, and styles to work into the next season's collection. They can also drill down into sales across different markets as they evaluate where to open stores next based on the density of potential shoppers.

Trender was created in just six months, with Zalora's in-house fashion experts, marketers and data analysts leveraging Tableau's embedded analytics platform. The solution was launched quicker to support brands through COVID-19, but over time will evolve to support analysis across a more diverse range of metrics. This will help Zalora seek to provide brand partners with constructive feedback and insight derived from our data. They can then leverage on the insights shared to re-look and re-calibrate their brand strategy.

Vasudha Sarda, Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at Zalora, shared that the early users of Trender have appreciated the simplicity with which they can filter data and visualise trends at a micro-level. "As a global brand we have so far found it difficult to get customer demographic or browsing data for the South East Asia market but with Trender will help us understand and react to demand on a real time basis" was feedback from one of the brand-partners.

The launch of Trender reflects Zalora's focus on using data to shape strategy. The company has been using Tableau for nearly four years and now has more than 500 users across multiple departments. They use live dashboards to monitor everything from activity in service centers through to the performance of campaigns. This real-time data is especially valuable in managing events like Singles Day, which is the biggest shopping holiday in the world.

Zalora now plans to build on this data culture and create a roadmap for best practice which can be used internally and by customers.

"As an e-commerce company, our success lies in data analytics capability and agility to respond to the fast-changing consumer demands and the pandemic has brought to light this need," said Sarda. "We now want to help build that same data culture across brands and work together to increase data maturity."