Why Big Data Is This Season’s Big Fashion Trend

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By Katherine Noyes

When Julia Fowler was working as a fashion designer in Australia back in the early 2000s, she found herself frustrated by the lack of information available to help her understand and respond to the latest trends.

“We had internal data on the performance of previous seasons’ products and access to inspirational trend sites,” she recalls, “but no way to understand opportunities we’d missed or concrete data on how we could improve our product assortment.”

With nowhere to turn, Fowler decided to take it upon herself to develop a solution to the problem. Her timing was just right: A methodology and series of technologies collectively called “big data” was beginning to swell in the technology industry.

Fowler has since swapped her title of designer for that of co-founder at Editd (pronounced “edited” and stylized in all caps), a company she launched five years ago with technical co-founder Geoff Watts, who now serves as the company’s CEO. Their mission: to help the world’s apparel retailers, brands, and suppliers deliver the right products at the right price and the right time.

“Every time you see a product on discount, it’s because the wrong decisions were made,” Fowler says. “This leads to a lot of wastage in the industry. I wanted to fix that problem.”

Editd says it now has the biggest apparel data warehouse in the world. It offers that data up to customers along with real-time analytics and an assortment of other tools, powered by 120 servers and hundreds of terabytes of data. The London-based company, which has 27 employees and $6 million in investment, counts Gap and Target among its customers. It’s also profitable, Watts says, though he declined to disclose the company’s revenues.

For the rest of the story, please go to Fortune.com.