NEW YORK: ThirdLove, the e-commerce company, is tapping the power of digital data as it strives to fundamentally transform the bra category.

Ra'el Cohen, ThirdLove’s chief creative officer, discussed this subject during a session at the 2018 CommerceNext conference in New York.

“We use data to connect with our customers, create better experiences, and, ultimately, create a better product,” she said. (For more, read WARC’s in-depth report: ThirdLove: A bra brand built on 600 million datapoints.)

Central to this effort is “Fit Finder”, a digital survey that takes a few minutes to complete, and asks visitors to ThirdLove’s website about their bra history – from sizes and brands to sources of discomfort – to find exactly the right product for her.

As well as ensuring the customer gets a better-fitting bra, this tool generates rich insights for the five-year-old San Francisco-based enterprise to leverage across its business.

“So far, over ten million women have done the Fit Finder, and we have over 600 million datapoints,” said Cohen. “That’s a ton of data. And we can use it in a lot of different ways.”

One example feeds down to a single, but crucial, data nugget: ThirdLove discovered 50% of women fell between specific cup sizes – A, B, C, and so on.

In response, it developed half-sizes, and has extended its product slate to 70 sizes, roughly twice the industry norm, that appeal to a far broader spectrum of body types.

On occasion, the survey suggests a size and shape that’s not part of the current ThirdLove mix. And, in those instances, shoppers can sign up to receive a notification when an appropriate bra becomes available on the e-commerce platform.

“That ‘notify me’ option is really key for ThirdLove, because that helps us buy and plan our inventory in a more thoughtful way,” Cohen said.

As proof, Cohen could point to two dozen new offerings launched in June 2018: “When our planning team sat down, they realized that we had 1.3 million women on the wait list for 24 of the sizes that they were thinking of adding,” she said.

“This was an expanded size range at the top of our range. And they were definitely necessary sizes to add, especially in the US. And it’s a lot of sizes that other brands ignore.”

Sourced from WARC