New product development can be a bit of a trying process — trends change rapidly, consumers’ behavior differs from what they say they want and supply chain hold-ups can lead to launch delays.
And when retailers launch a new product line in their existing market, they want a bit more assurance than a “probably” when they ask whether it will sell.
That’s where Utah’s Particl comes in. The market intelligence platform helps online retailers track their competitors’ inventories, pricing and discount rates, which in turn empowers clients to make decisions around altering their own lines — or launching completely new collections. The startup based near Salt Lake City announced $8.5 million in Series A funding last year.
In Chubbies’ case, the latter proved a valuable option. The Austin, Texas-based brand, most widely known for its shorts, worked with Particl to successfully launch a men’s pants line in 2022.
For Dave Smiley, Particl’s co-founder and chief operating officer, the launch proved a smash hit.
“Chubbies is going to hit $100 million this year in revenue, and in talking with them just a few weeks ago, somewhere between 10 and 15 percent of that is going to be attributed to their pants, which we helped them launch,” he said. “Going from 18 months ago, zero percent of the business, to now 10 to 15 percent of the business, they tell us all the time that helping them get into that category has been game changing for them.”
The Particl platform allows customers to select brands they consider competitors — and gives insights on other brands that may be unknown to the client, Smiley said. From there, it’s all about the tracking. According to Smiley, Chubbies monitors brands including Vuori, Lululemon, Birddog, Fair Harbor and Todd Snyder as competitors.
Smiley said the Particl platform does 95 percent of the lifting, and that his team does the other 5 percent — whether helping customers analyze the data, identifying blind spots they may have or otherwise.
Lauren Neville, Chubbies’ director of consumer insights, said the platform meant Chubbies could track a number of considerations throughout the new product development journey.
“We were able to dive into a lot of what people were buying — is it cotton? Is it synthetic? What price point? What are they using it for? How should we photograph it? I think that that actually gave us the upper hand in our pant launch,” she told Sourcing Journal. “We were able to partner with Particl and gather a ton of insights, and even use previous years’ data from other brands. We’re able to figure out timing of launches, price point, material, what makes us different, how to market it. Honestly, I think that that was a huge help for our successful pant launch.”
Chubbies, which counts San Francisco 49ers star George Kittle as a fan, launched its pants in two phases — it first launched an iteration made of synthetic fabric that it positioned for golf, work or other activities. It later released the pants in a stretch cotton version. Neville said the decision on which to launch first came from Particl’s insights.
“When we were trying to make a decision where to put more weight, we were using Particl to see what was really trending at that time. By doing so, we were able to make a decision that was right for our customer, [and ended up] really going big into this pant launch with our more synthetic [pant] first,” Neville told Sourcing Journal.
The brand also used Particl to understand how rivals styled their pants — and what price they came in at.
Smiley said Chubbies has used those considerations to launch other products — on a recent visit to Chubbies’ warehouse in Austin, he said, the team showed him shackets, which the brand launched for fall with the help of Particl’s insights.
“They [said], ‘This is because of Particl — we knew that shackets were a thing, but we just didn’t know they were selling at the demand that they were.’”
While the brand has been able to launch new products because of Particl’s technology, Neville said it could also help Chubbies make incremental improvements and additions to existing product lines and price points. For instance, she said, the next step for men’s pants will be offering different inseam lengths, based on market intelligence and consumer demand.
“We think that data is really helping us inform what are customers wanting, what are customers needing, and exactly where are those whitespaces?” Neville said.
Neville said that while Chubbies’ main business focus will continue to be its men’s line, it may also continue to expand its focus to women’s and children’s products.
The Particl platform shows users data about colors, prices, product mix and more.
Courtesy of Particl
The platform is powered by artificial intelligence. Smiley said that, over the three years Particl has been in existence, the technology behind the platform has improved its tracking abilities by about 20 percentage points.
At the beginning, Smiley said, the platform could track about 80 percent of the products on every site that Smiley’s team was tracking. Now, he said, it can track between 99 and 100 percent of products on those sites.
The technology behind Particl focuses on measuring change in inventory, price and trends, Smiley explained. To do that, the system runs nearly constantly.
“The data is what we call scraped data, or collected data, from the web. Most of the sites that you see on the web actually have their inventory somewhere stored on the site, and it’s usually somehow tied to the cart. We basically have systems running [to track] tens of millions of variants every day, every night, and then… we just track that time over time. And we’re able to start to create this timeline function and calculate sales from it.”
For Particl, the goal going forward is to deliver the best insights and experience possible to its existing customers, and to bring in additional customers. Beyond its partnership with Chubbies, the startup, formerly known as Luz, has partnerships with Skims, True Religion, Rothy’s and Smartwool.
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{Keywords}Technology,Topics,artificial intelligence,menswear,partnership,Pricing,startup{/Keywords}