How Desigual uses consumer insights to drive sales

Founded in 1984, Desigual envisages a world in which people can dress in a different way, in clothes that help generate positive feelings, and are affordable to all. Desigual has grown considerably since it first opened its doors, and now has 7,000 multibrand stores and 200 Desigual brand stores worldwide.

On Zalando, Desigual's goal is to inspire customers through unique creations. They have been partnering with Zalando for 10 years across all markets. Originally a purely Wholesale partner, they are now making use of various Zalando services such as Partner Program, ZMS and ZMS Insights.

Desigual's strategic goal was to increase their share of sales to younger customers. Previously, delivering on this goal had been a challenge. Desigual lacked quantitative insights on customers, and so weren’t able to work in a data-driven way, or to track progress.

In order to meet these challenges, Desigual started working with the ZMS Insights tool. They used the SKU insights tab to discover what part of their assortment is most appealing to their target customer, and how this differs from other audiences. What colors and patterns are important to them, what shapes, what styles.

There is a cross-functional team at Desigual that analyzes the data, and aligns with Zalando’s category management on action plans in regular meetings. Here they for example discuss reorders and further sell-in of articles that are performing well against the target customer.  

Desigual has also actively increased the visibility of these articles by promoting them via ZMS Co Curated Products to drive performance with strong impact. At the same time, they ensure that they select the right key styles using this data-driven approach for branding campaigns.

With the help of ZMS, Desigual was able to increase visibility for its products on Zalando by +69% year-over-year and experienced +38% GMV growth among shoppers below the age of 35 years since 2018.

Desigual now uses the Consumer Insights tool to track their progress against their goals, checking regularly for movements in their sales share of younger customers. While they focus on this goal as a long-term objective, Desigual already today has been able to remarkably reduce the average customer age. They are also actively developing their customer base in a targeted manner through assortment merchandising and ZMS to attract new customers on Zalando.