First Insight Launches InsightSuite for Wholesale to Help Sales Organizations Recommend the Right Product Assortments to Their Retail Partners

PITTSBURGH, PA--(Marketwired - Dec 22, 2015) -  First Insight, the leading provider of solutions that incorporate the voice of the customer into the selection and pricing of new products, today announced the release of InsightSuite for Wholesale, a specialized InsightSuite solution adapted to meet the unique challenges of wholesale sales organizations.

"Each day, wholesalers fight dozens of competitors for shelf space and have to rigorously defend every SKU they recommend placing in each store," said Greg Petro, President and CEO of First Insight. "InsightSuite for Wholesale helps them identify which products will resonate the most with each retailer's customers, arming their sales teams with highly accurate data to persuade skeptical retail buyers to stock their products."

Whether it's style, price, or subtle differences in color, each retailer's customers have distinct buying preferences. InsightSuite for Wholesale allows manufacturers to collect direct feedback on upcoming products from each retailer's customers. Easy-to-interpret results enable wholesale sales teams to accurately predict product demand, average unit retail price, and margin for each item within a retailer's customer base, driving predictive line recommendations and significantly reducing unplanned vendor allowances and RTVs. 

"Our consumers are talking, and we are listening to them to design and deliver what they really want," said Keith Duplain, SVP and GM at Caleres. "Being able to present direct consumer feedback during line reviews really elevates the discussions we have with our retail partners. Our sales team is more confident making line recommendations and our partners feel they are making more data-driven, consumer-based decisions. This drives better business results for us and for our retail partners."

InsightSuite for Wholesale helps drive incremental line bookings and reduced vendor allowances by:

• Incorporating the voice of the retailer's customer into assortment mix decisions.
• Providing more accurate forecasts of customer demand and margin.
• Positioning demand for their products versus their competitors'.
• Enabling fact-based assortment discussions and decisions between wholesale sales executives and their retailer partners, resulting in better business outcomes for both.

For more information about InsightSuite for Wholesaler, please visit http://www.firstinsight.com/wholesale

In addition to its new Wholesale solution, First Insight is also announcing a major update to its InsightSuite platform. InsightSuite is used by the world's top brands and retailers to gain advance insight into new product performance resulting in improved sales, margins, and inventory turnover.

"Our fourth-generation InsightSuite platform takes new product decision-making to a new level," said Greg Petro, President and CEO of First Insight. "The user interface has been completely updated based on feedback from our customers, making it more intuitive and easy-to-use so that the experience is more engaging and productive. We're also introducing our first-ever mobile app, so merchants, designers and marketers can access their information anytime, anywhere."

The cloud-based InsightSuite platform provides highly accurate, forward-looking data that help retailers and brands know which items will appeal to consumers months before they hit the market. This platform update promotes deep data analysis and makes it even easier to:

• View item results with details by geography and segments.
• Efficiently leverage customer comments and feedback on individual items.
• Review aggregated results of assortments tested across multiple geographies.

"We use InsightSuite to find out what our customers want, and we're excited about this update because it directly meets our needs to do that even more effectively. The interface is very clean and intuitive," said Crystal Salmi, Buyer for Emerging Markets at maurices. 

About First Insight, Inc.
First Insight is the world's leading provider of solutions that empower brands to incorporate the voice of the consumer into the design and merchandising of new products. Through the use of online consumer engagement, the First Insight solution gathers real-time consumer data and applies predictive analytic models to create actionable insights, which drive measurable value. Retailers, manufacturers and brands use the First Insight solution to design, select, price and market the most profitable new products for improved sales, margins and inventory turnover. Customers include some of world's leading vertically integrated brands, sporting goods companies, department stores, mass merchant retailers and wholesalers. For further information, please visit www.firstinsight.com.