First Insight is aimed at connecting retailers and manufacturers to the voice of the consumer to optimize and streamline critical business decisions. By tapping into the current thinking of large groups of consumers through online casual games and applying predictive analytics, First Insight’s solution is designed to gives retailers the power to generate early insight on trends, attributes and product demand, before they make their purchasing decisions.
Consumers are identified through various avenues of social media, their current insights are gathered through casual games and then predicative analytics are applied. The resulting solution offers a real time, ahead-of-the-trend view of consumer behavior, which retailers can use to truly sense product demand. Consumers also benefit because they are given a more active voice in the retailing process, expressing what they want and will be more likely to buy.
Team:
Headquartered in Pittsburgh with offices in Boston and India, First Insight is led by an experienced management team with interdisciplinary expertise in merchandising, market research, consumer intelligence, operations research and software application development.
The board of directors includes Richard Marcus of Neiman Marcus and Joel Adams of Adams Capital Management along with First Insight’s CEO, Greg Petro. Greg has 25+ years experience in the retail industry, including Management, Sales and Buyer positions at retail industry leaders including Macy’s, Bradlees and Saks Fifth Avenue.
With an expertise in assessing retail and consumer demand, retail business models, planning and demand systems and the use of technology, Greg founded First Insight in 2007. Since then, the company has grown from concept through testing to live product with a customer base that includes a multi-billion dollar, U.S.-based retailer. As the CEO and founder, Greg provides valuable research and strategic thought leadership to the company as well as to his customer base and is truly committed to removing the distance between consumers and buyers.
Market Relevance:
First Insight’s solution is designed to give an active voice to consumers, allowing them to influence products and trends before they are brought to market. With the ability to reach large numbers of consumers in as short as 48 hours, First Insight’s solution allows retailers to make decisions quickly regarding what they will buy and in what volume. Having this information early in the planning process allows retailers to define customer needs, identify category opportunities, mitigate risk and evaluate and select products.
Through an ongoing interaction with consumers, First Insight also creates a new marketing channel to build customer loyalty while keeping them engaged with your brand.
Delivery:
First Insight taps into the power of consumer influence through online communities — both internal to a company and across the Internet — through engaging, interactive games. The games are designed to yield data, which is applied to predictive analytics. As a result, First Insight is able to pinpoint who to listen to and guide merchants and designers to select product assortments that are trend-right and to order quantities more likely to sell-through at full retail prices. Retailers save markdown dollars and avoid lost sales.
By using First Insight’s solution, merchants, designers, and other decision-makers gain precision product guidance through their own, personalized online dashboard. Users can select items, review results and draw on guidance, without changing how they work.
Our powerful predictive analytic technology helps users forecast a product’s performance before it is designed, sourced or brought to market. Available on a software-as-a-service (SaaS) basis, the innovative solution is easy to implement and use without disrupting existing processes or making more work for a company or its IT team. Users have a proactive and accurate tool designed to allow them to look out the front windshield instead of the rear-view mirror when making key merchandising decisions
First Insight has a technology platform and an innovative approach that enables retailers to specifically speak to the audience they want to talk to, filtering out those people that will not benefit the conversation, ultimately delivery the most reliable and relevant results.
Proof Points:
The First Insight Solution offers leaders in the retail industry a new tool to make critical decisions related to product design, buying, assortment planning, pricing and marketing by generating early insight on trends, product attributes and customer demand. Having actionable guidance upfront allows clients to make the most profitable decisions across a number of business areas including merchandising, design, marketing, strategy and even stores.
First Insight is working with some of the largest retailers in the industry who are experiencing unprecedented improvements in sales, gross margins and inventory turnover.
