Neiman Marcus optimizes merchandising with machine learning
Neiman Marcus is utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to improve pricing and merchandising decisions.
The luxury retailer is utilizing Centric Market Intelligence across the company including pricing, merchandising, assortment planning, marketing and e-commerce, replacing previously manual processes that didn’t allow the company to make data-based decisions.
Among the Centric Market Intelligence modules Neiman Marcus leverages is Product Matching, an ML-driven module that lets the retailer effectively match exact products across competing retailers. With Product Matching, Neiman Marcus merchandisers can view like-for-like items at an item or SKU level, export that view in Excel, tie in their style ID, send it off to their pricing team, and execute price changes the next day.
In addition, Neiman Marcus’s e-commerce team can track whether a category is underperforming and get triggers to look more closely at the contributing factors and whether the category is down among all competitors or just at Neiman Marcus.
Other areas where the retailer deploys the solution include assortment planning, which uses it to evaluate whether product overlap with competitors is warranted; and "size brokenness," or checking into why certain SKUs of specific products do or do not sell out.
"I see Centric Market Intelligence as a useful tool to streamline how we view and operate the business as it relates to our positioning competitively from an assortment standpoint, a pricing standpoint, finding those whitespace opportunities, and really knowing when and how to react to business trends," said Jordan Pious, VP, performance & growth, Neiman Marcus.
Neiman Marcus makes major technology investments
In 2022, Neiman Marcus said it would invest $200 million in technology and $90 million in supply chain to enhance its systems and distribution facilities. The company’s internal technology resources include Stylyze, a machine learning platform that offers product attribution data and curated content to support relevant shopping experiences across the customer journey, which it acquired in 2021.
That purchase kicked off what Neiman Marcus Group said at the time would be a three-year, $500 million-plus planned gross investment in digital technology to support its integrated luxury retail strategy.
Neiman Marcus is a Dallas-based luxury retailer founded 1907. Part of Neiman Marcus Group (NMG), it operates 36 stores and an e-commerce luxury platform in the U.S., as well as remote selling and personalization technology. In addition to Neiman Marcus, NMG operates two Bergdorf Goodman stores and five Last Call stores.