Cos Bar Taps Skypad Data Performance to Better Inventory Visibility
Inventory visibility will only become more important as fashion and beauty brands work to target their consumers and deliver on their demand IRL, online and even beyond that into the metaverse.
As such, luxury cosmetics retailer Cos Bar has enlisted the support of data performance platform Skypad from the SKY I.T. Group to equip the company with tools to create better data insights in house, as well as to improve the consumer’s shopping experience.
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Skypad is a data platform that, through automation and reporting, provides insights into product and sales trends for some of the most notable beauty and fashion retailers in the industry, with clientele including Shiseido, Neiman Marcus, Saks Fifth Avenue and Bond No. 9.
On why the company turned to Skypad, Cos Bar vice president of operations Cristina Estrada, said, “Pulling reports for all of our brands is extremely tedious and time-consuming, which led to our monthly reporting distribution cadence. Given that the standard reporting cadence for the retail industry is weekly, this was a challenge for internal brand reporting. Monthly reporting limits in-season opportunities, which ultimately reduces opportunity for unplanned sales, therefore undermining the customer experience.
“Skypad is self-service, eliminating the manual monthly distribution of reports via email, and increasing visibility on metrics to WoW vs MoM,” she continued. “With access to weekly sales performance metrics and key reporting views on one platform, data can be organized in a user-defined, customizable view that best supports your business.”
Weighing in on what sets the company apart from its competitors, Skypad vice president Gil Hakami, said the product is “transforming the industry in the sense that we created a standard platform that allows not only buyers to automatically share the information across all of their brands easily in a secure manner, but brands can go and self-serve the data they need in a best practice format.”
The partnership between Cos Bar and Skypad is unique, with the company being the first official beauty retailer to sign an exclusive partnership with the data analytics group to make the brands it stocks more proficient, meaning none of Cos Bars many brands including Clinique, La Mer and Tom Ford beauty, can access sales performance data without a subscription to Skypad.
With the partnership launching Aug. 22, Cos Bar will leave behind its month-to-month consumer reports in favor of week-to-week reports, which gives it much faster, move relevant inventory insights, including what products sell the most and where. It also helps the brands reduce excess, which ultimately becomes waste and, of course, adds to the industry’s already unfavorable environmental impact.
“Cos Bar’s main priority has always been customer experience and meeting customer expectations. Given the current retail climate and landscape, it’s critical to have increased visibility in a timely manner,” Estrada said. “Being able to access Skypad weekly versus equips our team with the tools necessary to approach business proactively versus reactively, enabling us to maximize opportunity and mitigate potential risks of out-of-stocks.
“Having excess inventory is a common problem for beauty retailers as brands continually launch new products,” she continued. “However, the continual need to cycle in product newness while also maintaining appropriate inventory levels on our tried-and-true staples can lead to overstocks and surplus inventory.”
Skypad says its visibility has proved beneficial to many businesses because it explains data reports in a way retailers and brands can more easily understand.
“By understanding the business, you can then understand critical insights that will make your stores include the right product, make sure that you have the right inventory, and the right level of inventory,” Hakami said.
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