Category Archives: Positive Inflection
- This week our system detected unusual activity in: CBRL, CRI, LEN, LULU, PZZA, SIG, ULTA, W
- Our process helps discover brands that are struggling to move product and resorting to changing keywords in campaigns
- Robust panel access helps reveal discounts sent to specific cohorts that are ‘invisible’ to coupon clippers on the sell-side
- 8 year history enables comparisons vs other outlier periods such as COVID
COVID Masks and Crafts vs. Feeding the Family
ETSY: Ensemble revealed new discount campaigns ahead of reduced outlook.
WMT: Ensemble tracked fewer email campaigns, and declining promotional discounts before improved inventory position and strong outlook.
While our competitors focus on precisely tracking revenues our promotional ensemble provides a more predictive gauge of organic demand. Our technology can uncover changes in how brands communicate with customers and leads.
With the holidays in the rear-view mirror, it appears demand receded, and management responded by ramping up the implied discount language in emails. We captured more campaigns using 40% off language for specific categories. These campaigns and language had never been used before.
Persistent declining sales for the mature marketplace provides clues that consumer preferences have shifted. Gone are the lockdown and stimulus-related tailwinds driving interest in at-home crafts, masks mini calendars, dog sweaters, cute cocktails mixology and other unessential at-home items.
As food costs have spiraled out of control consumers have shifted to the perceived value provided by Walmart.
Wall Street’s ‘silo’ style of coverage creates the opportunity as one analyst covers ‘internet’ with Etsy and entirely different team covers consumer staples and Walmart. Both are now technology companies. Our sector agnostic data driven approach makes it easy to compare the two. As seen in our composite, Walmart is clearly responding to improved inventory levels and robust demand by reducing their email campaigns and discounts
Random Walk email intelligence through our promotional ensemble delivers the most quantitative and predictive tracking of implied discounts and promotional cadence available. When brands are struggling to generate organic demand they ramp up sending volume to their leads and customers. We capture these potential inflections in near real-time and alert our investor partners ahead of the street.
- Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF)
TOTAL PROMOTIONAL VOLUME + 9% GROSS MARGIN +460bps
- The Children’s Place (PLCE)
STEEP DISCOUNT VOLUME +75% GROSS MARGIN: -480bps
- Farfetch Limited (FTCH)
SIGNIFICANT DISCOUNT VOLUME +127% GROSS MARGIN -370bps
- Foot Locker, Inc. (FL)
STEEP DISCOUNT VOLUME +79% GROSS MARGIN: -460bps
- Hibbett, Inc. (HIBB)
STEEP DISCOUNT VOLUME +108% GROSS MARGIN: -160bps
- Olaplex Holdings, Inc. (OLPX)
TOTAL PROMOTIONAL VOLUME +650% GROSS MARGIN: -550bps
- Petco (WOOF)
STEEP DISCOUNT VOLUME +780% GROSS MARGIN: -140bps
- Ulta Beauty (ULTA)
STEEP DISCOUNT VOLUME +107% GROSS MARGIN -110bps
- Walmart Inc. (WMT)
STEEP DISCOUNT VOLUME-37% GROSS MARGIN 40bps
- Mattresses experienced the fastest total promotional email volume growth last week.
- Live entertainment continues to see the biggest decline for the past quarter in term of significant discounts.
- Petcare is seeing fast rising significant discounts over the past quarter.
- Footwear remains one of the more promotional subsectors in our coverage with 11 of 15 tickers recording substantially higher significant promotional volume YoY last week.
- For the first time since March, Home Depot and Lowe’s both stayed out of “red” in the same week for increases in significant promotional volume. Both HD and LOW exhibited stable YoY total promotion volume.
- Our Department Store index has captured a divergence between several well-known retailers with some ramping promotions and others now easing. Earlier this summer we tracked largely “worsening” trends.
- Outdoor Apparel remains a longstanding member on the “worsening” list as all tickers in our index recorded increased total promotional volume YoY over the past two weeks.
- Furniture demand continues to lag as total promotional volume is ~40% higher YoY and significant promotional volume was up 122% YoY in the week ended June 12.
Our promotional ensemble identified the biggest outliers of the period from several weeks before Black Friday through Cyber Week for our investor partners.
Standouts with previously unseen promotions, largest risers in discount campaigns, or those with robust organic demand that were able to reduce email volumes include:
AEO, COUR, CROX, CURV, GME, HIBB, LOVE, PVH, NKE, RH, SCVL, SONO, TPX, TSCO, URBN, VFC
Our email intelligence systems have been capturing tracking and classifying emails from leading brand for nearly 7 years providing the most robust, quantitative insight into email promotional activity. i
The quickest and cheapest method for management to respond to demand inflections is to adjust its cadence and intensity of email discounts.
AMERICAN EAGLE OUTFITTERS (AEO) Both total promotional email volume and significant discounts nearly 30% lower than a year ago.
GAMESTOP (GME) Meteoric rise in BF related promotional activity with “$50 off x box” and “up to 60% off video games”.
HELLO FRESH (HLFF) Total promotional email volumes up nearly 300% driven by “$180 off Thanksgiving” and “get up to 70% off” discounts.
LOVESAC (LOVE) Steeper than year ago and higher volume significant discounts driven by “35% off Bundles”.
NIKE (NKE) Sequential and YoY declines in steep and significant discounts
VF CORP (VFC) Both North Face and Vans saw sharp rises in all categories of email promotions. Total inbox volumes, significant discounts, steep discounts and storewide promotions all rose to record highs.
contact us for to see the entire Holiday Promotional Outlier List
Within our universe of nearly 300 names, our email intelligence identified several brands relying on record setting promotions and discount to drive traffic both online and in stores. Compared with prior years, total promotional volume, total steep discounts, total significant discounts were all at least 100-200% higher than year ago levels.
Our systems alert investors to these situations which have often signaled dramatically reduced guidance.
BBBY, DASH ,GPRO
Tracking more than 1 million consumers, our ensemble has been successful at identifying severe slowdowns in demand for key goods and services.
(12) Our current list contains outliers that have shown dramatic deceleration in demand online.
Updated weekly, our industry leading email intelligence tracks consumers in near real-time. Identify trends and inflections before earnings, and ahead of the street.
Our promotional email ensemble helped investors better understand and quantify the magnitude of changes in the intensity and aggressiveness that apparel brands such as Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF), American Eagle (AE) and Guess (GES) are sending. As weather has warmed, our promotional ensemble reveals robust demand growth as consumers previously stuck at home load up on “going out” summer apparel.
Our promotional ensemble quantifies the changes such as key declines in the volume of email campaigns, the distribution discounts offered.
Successfully channelling rebounding demand for swimwear, AEO’s Aerie has further throttled back its promotions.
AEO’: 80% drop in indentive emails
Our tracking on an sector basis reveals AEO has become one of the least aggressive promotors compared with its peers compared with just a year ago.
AEO: Sharp decline in total promotional activity compared to peers
For Guess, our email intelligence allows investors to quantify the exact campaign frequency and intensity. As can be seen below, Guess is pushing out significant promotions and discount coupons much less frequently than a year ago as organic demand has rebounded.
