SS12 Trend Forecasting for Lingerie Business

How do you decide what lingerie to buy? Do you follow your gut instinct, get a vibe of what other buyers are looking at? Or do your research so you know exactly what’s on trend?

Lingerie has changed dramatically in the last 10 years, becoming much more fashion-led. Colors, silhouettes and styling are now as important as fit. Outerwear fashion has a greater influence, and with outerwear trends moving fast, it’s difficult to keep up with the must-haves and has-beens. So, where do you even begin to read these trends into lingerie?

Forecasting trends is as important for a buyer as a designer. While a designer will look further ahead, as a buyer you should be aware of which trends will be slow-movers, which are flash trends as well as the absolute essentials. You need to be able to tell the showpieces from the commercial pieces and spot the bankers.

What to Think About

Trend forecasting may seem complicated, understood only by the fashion-savvy, but in fact it comes down to several key components. Knowing your customer and what’s right for them, knowing where to look for direction, and how to read that information.

Knowing your customer: Demographic profiling is essential for any business. The more thorough your customer profile, the easier you will understand which trends appeal to them. Information like ‘A woman in her late twenties’ is not enough.

Build a fictional customer profile and detail her life from name, age and dress size to whether she’s single, married or has kids, her disposable income, where she works and shops, to the magazines she reads, the TV she watches, her hobbies as well as exercise regime.

Customer profiling will help you decide which trends to buy, and is the difference between beautiful stock that customers coo over, and beautiful stock that customers buy.