Decoding formalwear ranging success for Monsoon
Photo by Tristan Colangelo on UnsplashThe challenge
Monsoon is a ‘go-to’ for women’s formalwear but it was seeing a decline in sales and needed to address what was failing across the brand mix: range, in-store presentation, navigation, pricing, service and online presentation.
The business wanted to check for relevance and appeal and to ensure that Monsoon’s distinctive design and quality standards maintained their unique draw, for both brand loyalists and target shoppers.
Our approach
We recruited a 20-strong five-day forum of UK loyalist and target shoppers and tasked them with 3 days of browsing and shopping trials, first at competitors and then at local Monsoon flagships.
Through bespoke tasks and structured diaries, we explored the formal wear buying, choosing and ‘trying on’ mindset and probed ‘best and worst practice’ in navigation, ranging, store and styling aesthetic, quality and pricing. Input was uploaded daily and we probed for more nuanced insight.
In the final two days, we ran projective and exploratory online groups to uncover pointers on ‘holy grails’ and issues in range and best practice lessons to inform onward offer enhancement.
Results delivered
Insight provided clear pointers for in-store format improvement, enhanced navigation and ranging and better range aesthetic, ‘look creation’ and quality featuring. This was successfully applied to Monsoon’s category and store strategy.
“Everyone has found the research absolutely brilliant and extremely helpful”