Press Releases

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
May 2009

Lawrenceville, NJ — May 2009

Retailers who rely on the opinions of forecasters, designers and trade show speakers to guide their buying choices can now use a tool that provides quantitative information about the products their key competitors offer. "The Assortment Styler™ brings science to retail's forecasting and merchandising process," says Rick Babick, president of Design Research Reports, Inc., developer of Assortment Styler™.

"Our quantitative data allows retailers to make decisions based on facts rather than predictions," Babick says. "In this economy, retailers can't afford to make mistakes. It can be a huge advantage for buyers to use a tool like Assortment Styler™ to aid in their decision making."

Assortment Styler™ helps retailers grow their businesses by "enabling a new, in-depth understanding of their product offerings in the context of the competitive retail marketplace," Babick says. "In the first quarter we cataloged nearly 40,000 home goods offerings from Wal-Mart, Sears, Kmart, Target, JC Penney, Kohl’s and Bed, Bath & Beyond," he adds. By capturing web-based merchandising data from the nation's foremost retailers, Assortment Styler™ lets subscribers achieve what Babick and his team refer to as an "optimized product portfolio."

In the past, retailers could see how they differentiated themselves from the competition or mirrored a competitor's offerings in terms of product and price. "Now, we're studying assortments with the added filters of style, design, color, material, price, brand, designer and more," Babick says. For example, Assortment Styler™ can determine a retailer's percentage of country-styled soft goods, brass lamps or pink towels. "This is truly groundbreaking because there has never been a resource for that level of information before."

With the Assortment Styler™, product portfolio optimization "allows for sharper assortment planning that increases a retailer's gross margin return on investment,” Babick says. "Plus, a quantitative view of the retail universe helps ensure comprehensive assortment portfolios, assortment differentiation, enhanced competitive positioning and improved opportunity targeting."

The Assortment Styler™ is offered in subscription format. "A subscription to Assortment Styler™ will pay for itself if it succeeds in identifying one gap in a retailer's product offerings or one product that should be discontinued," Babick says. "If there is market demand for a product and you don't have it, you're giving business away." By identifying and then rapidly filling a product or price gap with Assortment Styler™, a retailer will see immediate sales and profit gains.

Subscribers to the Assortment Styler™ receive a reporting package with optional upgrades. Package features include:

• A dedicated website with secure password protection.
• Onsite or online staff training, based on subscription level.
• Microsoft Office compatibility for easy interface with Word, Excel and PowerPoint. "We've developed Excel-based pivot tables that facilitate higher-level data analyses and easily integrate with our clients’ internal data," Babick says.
• Customized Strategic Summary Reports highlighting industry trends in price, color, design and more, as well as seasonal data.

Faced with an ever-increasing challenge to capture market share in today's down-sized economy, the highly-detailed product information provided by the Assortment Styler™ gives retailers a valuable tool in their business arsenal. "If retailers don't know how their product mix compares to the competition, they have no reference point for determining where they should be going," Babick says. "The Assortment Styler™ will tell retailers where they are and help them pick their road to a more profitable future."

About Design Research Reports, Inc.: Design Research Reports is a research and marketing consulting company providing market intelligence in the Home Furnishings, Decorative Accessories, Giftware and Luxury markets. Further company information is available at www.designres.com. Inquiries may be directed to Rick Babick at (609) 896-1108.