VarietyIQ Staff
Taylor Stitch uses VarietyIQ to sharpen merchandising decisions. The platform’s incrementality algorithms and cohort-based analysis help the team balance breadth vs. depth, identify true growth drivers, and align assortment strategy to both business needs and different customer segments. Added capabilities like size expansion insights and “comps” benchmarking allow the team to make faster, more confident decisions during line adoption and bring-back reviews.
What I value most about VarietyIQ is how clearly it highlights incrementality. It forces us to separate the products that truly grow the business from the ones that just shift demand around. That lens alone has reshaped how we think about assortment strategy and product mix. Pair that with the white-glove support from their team—who help us translate the data into real merchandising decisions—and it’s made our merchandising process sharper and more grounded.
Overview
Taylor Stitch needed a way to go beyond surface-level sales and understand which products created net new demand. VarietyIQ connected directly to Shopify and provided decision-ready insights that helped guide assortment planning, product bring-backs, and size/fit expansion.
The tool also proved valuable for understanding customer cohorts — helping the team see which products resonated with VIPs vs. first-time buyers, and how assortment choices could be tailored without losing sight of broader business objectives.
Key Merchandising Challenges
- Breadth vs. depth: Overlapping, interchangeable products diluted demand and created missed opportunities for differentiated offerings.
- Incrementality: Without clear visibility, it was difficult to know whether top sellers were truly additive or cannibalizing existing products.
- Customer cohorts: Assortment decisions risked over-indexing on one audience segment at the expense of others.
- Sizing clarity: Opportunities for growth in size and fit were often buried in anecdotal feedback rather than data.
How VarietyIQ Helped
- Incrementality algorithms: Clarified which products and sizes added true value to the business by generating net new demand.
- Bring-back intelligence: Simplified reviewing the full back catalog and prioritizing proven winners for re-release.
- Cohort-based insights: Enabled analysis of product performance by customer type (e.g., VIP vs. first-time buyers), ensuring the assortment spoke to multiple audiences while meeting margin and growth targets.
- Comps feature: Allowed quick benchmarking of new products against similar products carried previously, offering a gut-check during assortment planning.
- Size & fit opportunities: Surfaced unmet demand in specific sizes, guiding potential expansion strategies.
Results
- Smarter bring-back calls that balance margin, demand fit, and cohort resonance.
- Clear growth opportunities by identifying incremental products and sizing gaps.
- Faster assortment debates, with data to balance creative instinct and business needs.
- Improved customer segmentation, aligning product decisions to both loyal repeat buyers and new customer acquisition.
What Made the Difference
- Focus on incrementality and differentiation rather than raw sales.
- Cohort-level analysis that keeps multiple audiences in view.
- Comps and bring-back tools that act as real-time guardrails during merchandising.
- Hands-on partnership that adapts insights to live merchandising debates.
Thanks to Luke Judson, coauthor of this note and a valued collaborator at Taylor Stitch.
