WGSN Aims to ‘Set Trends' in Indian Markets With Increased Local Content

WGSN, the leading global trend authority for fashion and creative industries with more than 6,000 clients across the world is excited to dive into South Asian markets with increased local content. The successful collaboration between WGSN and Technopak, which commenced in 2007, serves more than 200 clients today.

- Tanya Krishna

Technopak is India’s leading management consulting firm that focuses on Retail, Consumer Products & E-tailing, Fashion - Textile & Apparel, Food Services, and Agriculture, and Education. WGSN has also already taken strong first strides in publishing India specific reports and is keen to expand its services even more in the days to come. Talking on the same line with Paul Coxhill, Global Chief Marketing Officer, WGSN, Images BoF delves deep into the services offered by this trend leader and also its future plans in India.

Tell us something about Instock and about different ways and processes to use it for trend forecasting.

Paul Coxhill (PC): Instock was put up only two years ago. WGSN Instock is an online retail analytics system that provides fashion retailers with fast, in market intelligence to inform business critical buying and merchandising decisions. Earlier, primarily focused in UK and US, it has started catering to the Indian retailers as well from April 2015. The way the product works is that every night we screen images from the websites and e-commerce retailers across the UK and US and categorize each of them by look, colour, price, retailer, etc. Post that, a designer or a buyer or a merchandiser can search the type of outfit by categories like garment type, colour of garment, by brand, price, etc. And find out what’s actually moving online, what’s out of stock and what’s been discounted. In the past, buyers had to go to different shops and spend hours in window shopping to find out what others are selling and what’s in trend. But now, with Instock doing this task for them, they do not have to go for “mystery shopping” to find out about their competitors and to remain up to date.

What are the major markets for Instock?