Fayetteville Road Is The Research Firm Offering Brands And Retailers A New Playbook For Betting On Predictability And Boosting E-Commerce

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Fashion is one of the world’s largest consumer industries, estimated to be worth over $3 trillion by 2030. But with 4.7 million metric tons of CO2 emitted annually stemming from 17M+ tons of textile waste in the U.S. alone, the fashion industry is also the second largest global pollutant, according to retail tech experts Jessica Couch and Brittany Hicks.

With the rise of e-commerce and the incorporation of social media usage, consumer influence is higher than ever before. For Couch and Hicks, the problem lies in the current retail strategies that are being built around customers that are not representative of the niche groups that drive the majority of sales. In our recent interview, the two revealed that retailers either smarten up, or risk leaving money on the table.

In this year’s State of Fashion Technology Report, Mckinsey researchers highlighted hyperpersonalization as one of five key technology themes that fashion industry executives should consider when finding routes to maximize their resources. Brands and retailers now have access to highly accurate personalization tools and technologies, opening up competitive opportunities to leverage big data and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to then provide the tailored experiences that boost profits through long-term loyalty.

Intimately understanding the gaps between fashion professionals and consumers, Couch and Hicks founded Fayetteville Road, a “tech-first, data-driven, niche-focused” management consulting firm helping retailers “match people to products.” Through their innovative techniques, the firm offers their clients a wide-range of services that provide measurable results and pointed actions for corporations looking to authentically connect with niche markets, particularly women of color.

Helping her understand how to develop customized clothing for her “tall and curvy” frame, Couch’s aunt, who owned a tailoring business, inspired her to launch her own online boutique, Luxor + Finch, in the early 2010’s. Ascending through the ranks of fashion design and styling to eventually end up working with A-list stars like Lady Gaga, Couch’s desire to tackle the issue of fit on a much larger scale led her to Cornell University, where she worked to earn her Master’s degree in Fit Technology Integration.

According to Fayetteville Road’s research, over 70% of returns are due to poor fit, contributing to nearly $62 billion worth of shoes and apparel being sent back, in addition to $50 billion worth of dead inventory — items that never made it home with the customer at all. For women of color, it’s the lack of immersive consumer experiences and personalized marketing and Research and Development (R&D) measures that largely contribute to their issues with fit and product engagement across the sector.

Hicks began her fashion tech journey with an internship at Harley Davidson in their planning and product development department while she studied at North Carolina A&T. After spending the first five years of her career working in department store buying offices, a mentor of Hicks tapped her to help build out Amazon’s fashion organization, leaning on her interests of supply chain and process development. However, as the women found themselves getting deeper into the industry, there was a glaring problem they couldn’t overlook.

“There are internal barriers where you don't see a lot of women working in these tech roles,” explained Couch. “I had the opportunity to work as a product manager for a lot of tech companies within fashion. I was always the only woman, and definitely the only Black person.

“The issue with that is that when you're building out these technologies, you have to think about who the top consumers are, how they want to use it. You need an understanding of their culture. You need to deep dive into their habits and behaviors. And without proper representation on these teams, you're actually building something that could exclude a large part of the population.”

Fayetteville Road’s efforts and mission are highlighted by their focus on using the microcosm to inform the macrocosm. Their community largely consists of women who do not self-identify as white, are often not considered as the mainstream consumer for most fashion and beauty brands, and are seldom highlighted or catered to in the market. After experiencing similar journeys of being “the only,” Couch and Hicks connected through LinkedIn and began hosting conversations and events centered around women of color in fashion tech, attracting some of the industry’s biggest brand gatekeepers.

“We had an executive from Nike drive from Portland to Seattle to attend our event, and she probed us,” revealed Hicks. “‘What is your method to get these women in a room and have them share their experiences as consumers, but also professionals in the space?’” Hicks says this was the turning point for her and Couch to see that they were meeting the need that companies had, addressing the challenge of having to engage with a consumer that seemed inaccessible.

From there, Fayetteville Road was born, immediately becoming the parent company ofWOC Worldwide, a community extension empowering women of color entrepreneurs and thought leaders who hold careers and influence at the intersection of creative and tech. This year, the WOC brunch returned to NYC on October 16 to deliver a town hall filled with industry leaders eager to share their insights on where retail is headed and where POC fit in.

By having measurable deliverables and keeping clear KPI’s, Couch described Fayetteville Road’s methods of ensuring organizational change that lasts as a long process of strategic hand holding. Currently lacking adequate R&D, the fashion industry benefits from Fayetteville Road’s persona development, where they conduct a two-part qualitative and quantitative analysis employing AI, Natural Language Processing (NLP), and other data accumulation methods to aggregate the voice of the consumer and build a customized solution for the client based on those insights.

As a result, client partners receive the priceless opportunity to speak directly with their target customer and integrate the appropriate suite of technology and innovative best practices that address their specific needs. Understanding the common complexities of their consulting and the sometimes siloed structure of corporate retail organizations, Couch and Hicks utilize customized playbooks that they leave behind to ensure the entire organization has the necessary tools and resources to benchmark their success.

Throughout our interview, the founders emphasized that their work is not about race alone but about the potential for profitability for brands, as well as creating more opportunities for other women in fashion and beauty. Research shows that women of color spend 9x more than their non-white counterparts in beauty, health, and wellness categories, yet remain underrepresented in marketing initiatives and corporate operations.

“If Black women were a country, we’d have the 15th largest GDP,” revealed Couch. “If we follow these numbers, we know that in order to be profitable, you absolutely have to include the spending power of demographics that are a little more niche.”

As some of the most educated Americans by percentage, Black women are elevating their economic positioning, driving household spending, but are still left as an afterthought in the business of fashion. In the future, both Couch and Hicks would like to see the concept of inclusivity stretch beyond race and socioeconomic impact and shift toward a simple focus on product efficacy.

“We have to move beyond some of the demographic and quantitative information that we've captured about customers. That's really not useful in a consumer centric economy where people have more choices than they've ever had,” stated Hicks. To create a competitive edge in a post-pandemic landscape, she added that suppliers should start prioritizing the needs of their customers. “What problem are you solving?”

Couch agreed with Hicks on the evolution of inclusivity in the fashion industry, adding the importance of leveraging a consumer-centric economy through the express inclusion of the consumer perspective from end-to-end. “Brands and retailers can't be afraid to learn, fail, and adapt. But it's super important that we incorporate the consumer in a way that maybe we've never had in the past,” she said.

By taking the guesswork out of providing the consumer with what they want, Fayetteville Road’s innovative social commerce and data mining techniques aim to solve the fashion industry’s biggest problems surrounding waste and failed bets on fleeting trends.

“We now have a way to really hear, listen, develop, produce and kind of sit back and repeat,” said Couch of the state of fashion. “That is what I hope that inclusivity looks like in the future and I believe that's what our agency is here to help brands and retailers get a grasp of.”