OREANDA-NEWS. March 23, 2016. Ascential plc (the "Group" / LSE: ASC.L), the international, business-to-business media company with a focused portfolio of market-leading events and information services products, is pleased to confirm that its WGSN business has completed the planned release of a new digital platform.

The new platform released by WGSN, the global trend authority, brings together all of its market-leading products into one place, allowing users to seamlessly navigate between vital information on future consumer trends (up to two years ahead of the market) and up-to-the minute data regarding what is selling right now. The new platform houses WGSN Fashion, its flagship trend service for the fashion market; WGSN Lifestyle & Interiors, the only dedicated trend service serving the lifestyle and interiors sector; WGSN Instock, a newly enhanced version of its retail analytics website; WGSN Styletrial, a crowd-sourced trend validation product; and WGSN Mindset, its strategic advisory service. All of these products can now be accessed via one single sign-on, enabling users to navigate quickly and easily between them.

Within this new single platform, WGSN has also unveiled the latest version of its retail analytics tool, WGSN Instock. Key features of the new site include enhanced personalisation that allows users to track specific retailers, countries, brands and product categories from WGSN's warehouse of over 100 million product SKUs (updated daily). It will also allow users to track specific metrics to understand how different styles of product, colours, prints & graphics and price points are moving at retail. In an instant, users can now look at trends in Key Performance Indicators such as mark-up percentage, mark-down percentage, and frequency of restocks.

"Big data is changing the fashion industry. Decisions that once relied on intuition alone can now be backed by shrewd applications of targeted data," says Sansan Chen, EVP of Product at WGSN.

"As fashion cycles have significantly sped up - evidenced by recent announcements of designers aligning runway collections with retail offerings - and as markdowns continue eating away at already low margins, having instant access to valuable, accurate data from a single source becomes critical for both retailers and suppliers to drive their business growth. With this newly launched version of WGSN Instock, client businesses will have a brilliant tool for making pricing and range decisions with more speed and accuracy," she adds.

Jose Papa, CEO of WGSN explains:

"In the new market, retailers need to respond immediately to changes in consumer preference. The new WGSN Instock doesn't just give our clients data, it enables them to understand the data, and act on what the market is telling them."