Message A/S, Denmark's premier fashion apparel store, has navigated itself through major structural changes and significant financial crises, all while increasing company growth. For the self-taught CEO, much of that is attributed to TARGIT Decision Suite's business intelligence and analytics for retail, an indispensable part of everyday management.
The fashion business is constantly in flux. If you don't change with it, your business is done for. At Message, CEO Carsten Lauritsen had hundreds of spinning plates to oversee to keep the organization on the right track and keep customers satisfied. Trends, talent, and intuition are still central components in the creative process, but according to Lauritsen, the key to good decisions and success in the fashion business is a constant flow of reliable statistics and systematic analysis of sales data.
"Most people would be surprised if they knew how big the difference is between facts and gut instinct in a company like ours," says Lauritsen. "As a CEO, my biggest responsibility is to find the right combination of facts and the designer's gut feeling of where fashion is heading."
Market Conditions
Today, Message has more than 100 full-time employees and produces 10 fashion collections a year. That translates to nearly 20,000 products sold at 22 Message stores, numerous franchise partners, and 600 stores carrying Message products.
The company's brands are designed at headquarters in Denmark, produced in Asia, Eastern Europe, and Turkey, and distributed and sold in Scandinavia, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg.