Pick Me a Winner: Crocs uses data to improve product innovation
Company Size
1,000+
Region
- America
Country
- United States
Product
- First Insight Platform
Tech Stack
- Machine Learning
- Data Analytics
Implementation Scale
- Enterprise-wide Deployment
Impact Metrics
- Customer Satisfaction
- Productivity Improvements
- Revenue Growth
Technology Category
- Analytics & Modeling - Machine Learning
- Analytics & Modeling - Predictive Analytics
Applicable Industries
- Consumer Goods
- Retail
Applicable Functions
- Product Research & Development
- Sales & Marketing
Use Cases
- Demand Planning & Forecasting
- Predictive Quality Analytics
Services
- Data Science Services
- System Integration
About The Customer
Crocs, a well-known footwear manufacturer, gained popularity with its comfortable and simple clog shoes introduced in 2002. Over the years, the company developed a large following but faced challenges in maintaining relevance due to its unchanged design. To revitalize the brand, Crocs collaborated with designers and celebrities, releasing limited-edition and innovative versions of its clogs. The company's motto, 'Come As You Are,' emphasizes individuality and comfort. Crocs has diversified its product offerings to include sandals, sneakers, and boots, aiming to attract new fans while retaining loyal customers. The brand has also adopted a digital-focused framework to resonate with younger consumers, emphasizing personalization and trend-right updates.
The Challenge
Developing new products in the fashion and footwear industry is fraught with risk, as brands may invest significant resources only to find that their products do not meet customer expectations. This challenge is exacerbated by the rapid changes and trend influences in the industry. Crocs, known for its comfort-focused clog shoes, faced a decline in relevance due to a lack of style and innovation. Despite efforts to bring new designs to market quickly, Crocs struggled to consistently identify which categories represented the best opportunities for new products or line extensions. The company needed a more effective way to validate and test designs to ensure they resonated with customers and aligned with market trends.
The Solution
To address its challenges, Crocs partnered with First Insight in 2017 to integrate customer feedback more effectively into its product development process. First Insight's platform leverages years of data and machine learning to help brands identify winning designs and make informed decisions quickly. During the onboarding process, Crocs established a cross-functional team to align the platform's objectives with its strategic priorities. The platform integrates proposed designs and data, comparing them against past season items to gauge customer preferences. By presenting future products to customers and analyzing their responses, the platform generates product rankings, buy depth forecasts, and price elasticity curves. This data-driven approach enables Crocs to identify hot designs, avoid potential failures, and optimize pricing strategies.
Operational Impact
Quantitative Benefit
Case Study missing?
Start adding your own!
Register with your work email and create a new case study profile for your business.
Related Case Studies.
Case Study
Improving Vending Machine Profitability with the Internet of Things (IoT)
The vending industry is undergoing a sea change, taking advantage of new technologies to go beyond just delivering snacks to creating a new retail location. Intelligent vending machines can be found in many public locations as well as company facilities, selling different types of goods and services, including even computer accessories, gold bars, tickets, and office supplies. With increasing sophistication, they may also provide time- and location-based data pertaining to sales, inventory, and customer preferences. But at the end of the day, vending machine operators know greater profitability is driven by higher sales and lower operating costs.
Case Study
Improving Production Line Efficiency with Ethernet Micro RTU Controller
Moxa was asked to provide a connectivity solution for one of the world's leading cosmetics companies. This multinational corporation, with retail presence in 130 countries, 23 global braches, and over 66,000 employees, sought to improve the efficiency of their production process by migrating from manual monitoring to an automatic productivity monitoring system. The production line was being monitored by ABB Real-TPI, a factory information system that offers data collection and analysis to improve plant efficiency. Due to software limitations, the customer needed an OPC server and a corresponding I/O solution to collect data from additional sensor devices for the Real-TPI system. The goal is to enable the factory information system to more thoroughly collect data from every corner of the production line. This will improve its ability to measure Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) and translate into increased production efficiencies. System Requirements • Instant status updates while still consuming minimal bandwidth to relieve strain on limited factory networks • Interoperable with ABB Real-TPI • Small form factor appropriate for deployment where space is scarce • Remote software management and configuration to simplify operations
Case Study
How Sirqul’s IoT Platform is Crafting Carrefour’s New In-Store Experiences
Carrefour Taiwan’s goal is to be completely digital by end of 2018. Out-dated manual methods for analysis and assumptions limited Carrefour’s ability to change the customer experience and were void of real-time decision-making capabilities. Rather than relying solely on sales data, assumptions, and disparate systems, Carrefour Taiwan’s CEO led an initiative to find a connected IoT solution that could give the team the ability to make real-time changes and more informed decisions. Prior to implementing, Carrefour struggled to address their conversion rates and did not have the proper insights into the customer decision-making process nor how to make an immediate impact without losing customer confidence.
Case Study
Digital Retail Security Solutions
Sennco wanted to help its retail customers increase sales and profits by developing an innovative alarm system as opposed to conventional connected alarms that are permanently tethered to display products. These traditional security systems were cumbersome and intrusive to the customer shopping experience. Additionally, they provided no useful data or analytics.