Trend forecasting sites take off

A new fashion ‘trend’ is suddenly top topic on the lips of insiders in our new forward thinking digital days. WGSN, (Worth Global Style Network), is a trend forecasting website with more than 38,000 users including Armani and Walmart.

And, at the end of January, EMAP revealed WGSN created £40m of revenues in 2010, up by 5pc on the previous year – roughly the same amount of revenue generated by all of Emap's magazines put together. Not only are the figures astonishing but, in an era of mass connectivity, open the floodgates to a new highly competitive business; trend forecasting.

Founded in 1997 by Julian and Marc Worth, the idea was to move forecasting from dusty books and print to collate it all on one website and charge an annual subscription to business’ for a £16,500 fee.

Working across fashion trends, brand marketing to street style, other companies are now catching on. Stylesight is a US based rival who has venture capital backing and charges a smaller rate, a smaller UK launch, Trendwatching.com, which offers free tips on how to communicate with consumers. But why are big retail brands from Prada to Zara interested in trend forecasting sites which comes with no data or proof? And how much of an influence is it really having on what we see in the shops?

Susannah Kempe, chief executive of WGSN, explains retailers and designers look at it in a niche way, ‘the site has been redesigned so if someone wants a knitwear designer then they can in an environment solely focused on this discipline.’ However, the 200-strong Stylesight, headquartered in Tommy Hilfiger's former office in New York, with a base in the UK and satellite offices worldwide, hopes to change the sector by creating a technology-driven company which focuses on providing tools for creative departments as much as editorial content.

But how does trendforecasting actually work and why is it so valuable?

Isham Sardouk, senior vice president of Stylesight, experienced life on both sides of the fashion trend fence; as a designer at Victoria Secrets and now as a head forecaster.

He explains, ‘We work 18 months ahead across several markets such as men, women, children and interiors, and our job is to provide food for thought," he says. "There is a 16 to 18 month lead time with retailers and so the majority of our forecasts are not for the fast track fashion decisions but for the longer term decisions, although we do provide short term forecasts too. We are not doing the designers' jobs for them. We trust our client to use our content to adapt our message and make it our own.’ He continues, ‘There's no way of explaining forecasting. There is a lot of intuition.’

Bober, Stylesight founder, adds, ‘"Our future will be in becoming to designers what Microsoft is to office workers – giving them all the tools plus the information they need to do their jobs.’