Interview - Karen Moon

October 28, 2015

Article

Summary

Q: In a single tweet - What does your company do?

A: Trendalytics is a visual analytics platform that measures what merchandise trends are resonating with consumers.

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Q: Which retail brand do you most admire? And why?

A: NET-A-PORTER. They’ve always been on the cutting edge of the next thing in fashion. I think they were the first to embrace content and story-telling behind the product in a really beautiful way. They have tied all the pieces together, with video and their magazine on the site – you’re not just going there to shop, you’re going there to be inspired as well as to purchase.

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Q: What is the biggest opportunity for retail brands? And why?

A: Collaboration, which may sound odd but we often find that merchandising and marketing have an opportunity to work even more closely together given their obvious interdependencies, but siloed nature of some corporate cultures. We were surprised that an aspect that so many companies found valuable in our platform was that it could be used across functions as a collaboration tool because we're tying a visual story with numbers.

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Q: What is the one piece of advice you'd share with your retailer peers?

A: Take risks – calculated risks. Brands that create a culture of failure tend to play it safe and stifle creativity and innovation. However, even when your business is stagnant it's an opportunity to bring freshness and newness to what you’re offering. Listening to consumers is incredibly important and the numbers show this – the best online retailers are the ones that are engaging them and evolving their businesses around consumer engagement and customer service.

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Q: What single thing would improve the quality of your life?

A: Sleep and yoga!

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Q: What one app can you not live without?

‍A: Google Maps, because I’m very locationally challenged.

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