Latest news with #CentricMarketIntelligence
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Navigating Tariff Turbulence With Pricing Elasticity
Despite their dominance in the news, tariffs are not new. Companies have seen them rise and fall across the globe in the past, always adjusting costs and margins in response. What is new, however, is today's unprecedented rate of dynamic tariff movement—and the colossal tumult it is causing. That means you need a dynamic pricing strategy to adapt to the uncertainty. More from Sourcing Journal Why South Carolina's Textile Manufacturers Want to Talk To Scott Bessent Long Beach Mayor Says It Could Take Months to 'Untangle the Backlog' at Nation's Busiest Port Tech Tactics: Bluecore Brings AI Shopping Assistant Alby to Shopify Retailers 'When things are moving so fast and you don't have a good, certain understanding of what's happening, you need to be a little bit more responsive and agile,' said Ravi Rangan, chief technology officer of Centric Software, in the webinar Tariff Turbulence: Leveraging Technology and Pricing Elasticity to Thrive in 2025. 'It's a little bit like being caught in a fire in the theater. You don't start analyzing what to do; you [just] run for the exit. But you want to be prepared.' Market intelligence tools like Centric Market Intelligence are key to creating a macroeconomic context—providing information on external forces of the market, what's happening, what's trending, what are the competitive forces, not just in your category, but across the industry. First step, noted Jade Huang, VP, strategy & market intelligence, Centric Software, is to set a pricing baseline. This entails examining and reaffirming your specific brand's price positioning and strategy in relation to your competitors, as well as noting how competitive companies build out their respective pricing and assortment architecture, and what changes they might have made over time. How they managed significant disruptive events is especially pertinent. Tracking the basic white T-shirt as an example across a variety of brands, Huang looked at pricing and assortment breadth to spotlight significant clusters and overall philosophy. She found, for example, that ASOS' average price for a white T-shirt was $32.37, among 355 skus of shirts and tops. Gap, in contrast, focuses 52 percent of its white T-shirt assortment in the entry price point of $21 to $25, but with only 23 shirts and top skus (tighter, but still higher than Uniqlo's highly rationalized nine). Meanwhile, H&M, with 71 shirts and top skus, focuses on mass appeal, with 44 percent of its white T-shirts priced between $6 to $10, with entry price point as little as under $5. To understand the shift in prices and strategy over time, Huang then looked at price positioning from Q1 2020 to Q1 2025. This revealed that ASOS had diversified and spread out its risk by expanding white T-shirt price points across $16 to $35 today, instead of the strong $16 to $20 range focus from 2020, thus diversifying from a 41 percent single price point concentration. Major department stores, which source from thousands of small to large brands, also serve as important gauges of larger market shifts. Centric Market Intelligence revealed that in the last month, Macy's raised its average MSRP ticket for white T-shirts 'a whopping $11' from $42 to $53.' Fast-fashion Chinese retailer Shein, which no longer has the under $800 duty-free de minimis loophole on its side, raised its average white T-shirt price from $20 to $29 in just one week in April 2025 (a $9 increase)—a dramatic hike for a brand that has built its reputation on super low prices. Digging deeper, Centric's intelligence interpreted that evergreen items have longer-lasting appeal than fleeting trends, thus justifying the high white tee price hike. With the power to monitor the market and competitors in real time, especially around disruptions like tariffs, 'you can start to have some inferences on how [companies] are thinking about spreading out that cost and passing it to customers,' said Huang. In addition to focusing on external forces and outside competitive analysis, Centric also has tools for companies to look inward and analyze their own operations, something especially important for omnichannel retailers cross-channel in uncertain times. 'In addition to the probing and deep sensing from the outside, there's also the other parts of, how do I organize my product? How do I do the bill of material? How do I pick materials? How do I pick from multiple sources or from my supply chain, or shift supply chains? And how do I track to product development metrics and supply sustainability targets?' said Rangan. Any pricing strategy must also take the consumer into account, from their level of tolerance and their direct feedback. As consumers are managing their disposable income and budgets, smart companies should proactively and transparently communicate price hikes via direct email, website postings and/or social media. Centric's Digital Shelf Analysis (DSA) provides consumer feedback and review insights, which can also factor into the equation. With future and even current tariff levies constantly in flux, Centric tools allow companies to run various 'what if?' scenarios to be ready when disruption occurs. 'I can basically do simulations of different [sourcing and manufacturing] strategies. And within the strategy, simulate different tariff scenarios,' said Rangan. 'Especially if I'm expecting a tariff scenario that I need to be prepared for. So, if [a tariff] does enact in 90 days, then I can pull the trigger on [chosen scenario], and I have at least done my homework, and I can sleep at night.' Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
14-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Teddy Group Selects Centric Market Intelligence to Power Market Expansion with Competitor Benchmarking and Data-Driven Decision-Making
Italian fashion retail leader boosts localization of retail and e-commerce strategy with AI-powered competitive pricing and trend insights CAMPBELL, Calif., May 14, 2025 /PRNewswire-PRWeb/ -- Centric Software® is pleased to announce that Teddy Group has selected Centric Market Intelligence™ to underpin data-driven decisions across product planning and competitive pricing to boost its market positioning for flagship brand, Terranova. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, buy, make, price, allocate, sell and replenish products such as fashion, luxury, footwear, outdoor, home and related goods like cosmetics & personal care as well as multi-category retail to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals. Founded in 1961, Teddy S.p.A Group has grown from a small local store in Rimini, Italy, into a global fashion retail powerhouse. Terranova, launched in 1988, represents one of the group's flagship brands with over 500 stores in 37 markets, offering contemporary fashion for men, women and children. Today, the brand operates through multiple channels, including retail stores, 13 direct e-commerce markets and a growing marketplace presence. The integration of Centric Market Intelligence to Terranova's pricing and planning processes, will empower the brand to define more precise starting prices and markdown strategies per market and per channel. "One of the most valuable insights we expect from Centric is understanding product velocity—what sells out first and why. This will guide our pricing, assortment and replenishment strategies, making our e-commerce and marketplace approach more efficient and competitive." The implementation of Centric Market Intelligence comes at a pivotal time for the Teddy Group's digital transformation and marketplace expansion. With aims to consolidate its presence in local markets with a structured marketplace and logistics expansion plan, the Teddy Group sought a solution to the lack of real-time market insights and manual approach taken to forecasting and analysis across the product development, pricing and marketing processes. "We needed a better understanding of how to approach each different market with a different strategy," says Filippo Cisterni, eCommerce Manager at the Teddy Group. "At Teddy Group, we are driven by data in every single team - it is key for us in every aspect of our strategy. With Centric Market Intelligence, we will now have real-time insights on competitors and market trends." To maximize their market impact, Terranova requires in-depth, real-time insights to benchmark competitor assortments and pricing strategies across each marketplace to optimize the brand's relevancy and market penetration. This visibility will guide Terranova's decisions about how to localize their product offering with competitive initial price points and markdown strategies for each market. Prior to Centric Market Intelligence, competitor analysis was done manually via spreadsheets or through one-time reports from third-party vendors, which lacked live updates and historical trend visibility. "[Previously], our marketplace manager would spend up to 8 hours per channel manually selecting product listings for each marketplace, cross-referencing data in spreadsheets to determine the best assortment and pricing strategy every season," explains Cisterni, "With Centric Market Intelligence, we will be able to quickly compare seasonal trends and pricing strategies, helping us make smarter buying and pricing decisions." While initial implementation focuses on the Terranova brand, successful adoption will lead to expansion across other Teddy Group brands in the near future. "One of the key points in evaluating Centric over other solutions was the ease of comparison. It will give us clear, actionable insights into how the market is evolving season by season and how our competitors apply their strategies. Other tools we used in the past provided trend insights, but they lacked the depth of analysis we needed—Centric will allow us to make data-driven decisions with a level of precision we didn't have before," concludes Cisterni. "Retailers today need rapid access to market intelligence to make strategic decisions and stay competitive. Teddy Group's data-driven partnership with Centric Market Intelligence delivers a competitive advantage that is necessary for retail expansion. Manual processes are being transformed into actionable insights across pricing optimization, merchandising decisions and marketplace growth across multiple regions," says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. Learn more about Centric Software Request a demo Teddy S.p.A. Group ( Teddy Group is an Italian fashion company with a big dream: to offer more than just clothes, sharing a world to belong to. Through the brands Terranova, Rinascimento, Calliope and QB24, it wants to dress the world with beauty, welcome, promoting personal fulfillment, serving customers in 79 markets, thanks to an omnichannel distribution that includes online, directly managed or franchised single-brand stores and wholesale distribution. In 2023, the Group achieved a turnover of 672.5 million euros and retail revenues of 1.115 billion euros, with 841 stores and 3,464 employees. Media Contact Celia Newhouse, Centric Software, +14385015498, cnewhouse@ View original content to download multimedia: SOURCE Centric Software
