Creativity is vital in fashion, it’s even more critical to create an impactful and memorable house brand that resonates with your customer on a personal level. The Cato Corporation a leading specialty retailer in women’s fashion and accessories had difficulty creating unique designs for women of all sizes at affordable prices. With the goal to make every woman confident and beautiful, they hired YAY Design due to its proven success record with other clients.

We assembled and trained design teams delivering results under aggressive deadlines. We achieved double-digit sales increases in one quarter by redefining brand identity and a target market. We then worked with product development team leaders to devise seasonal product calendars for multiple categories.

KPIs

  • We established the entire design department.
  • We delivered product with end-year revenue sales of $278M versona sales
  • Developed cost and budget strategies to lower expenses by 4%.
  • We navigated concept and delivery to achieve a forecasted $1.6M in budget savings annually.

Key focus;

  • We were able to deliver products that met the customer’s needs and increased conversions.
  • We drove the internal redesign of the Versona assortment under a private label brand in 3 weeks, well ahead of the projected 6-month target.
  • We identified the customer persona and created a brand identity focusing on essentials and the base model for the versona stores.

More about the project.

During the discovery, we identified the customer persona through well-structured market research and sales analysis. We prepared a road map of three phases- Define / Measure / Analyze, Improve / Design,  Implement and Control, with key deliverables and timelines for each phase.

We defined the customer persona and created an avatar with a unified image. Through market and sales analysis, we were able to understand where the persona shops and which styles were essential to them. With the right product assortment, we designed trend boards that were shared across departments in order to have a unified look and stay on target.

We implemented merchandising strategies that allowed the customer to shop by look. We pared the fashion product assortment and created fashionable looks so that the customer would shop based on how the outfit would look. This increased conversions and offered a curated experience to our target audience. In stores, we merchandised products by mini boutiques to have a good flow of clothing.