Trend Scouting on Newbury St.

Lindsay Rutherford
Apr 24, 2019
2 min read

For this group trend scouting assignment, we were asked to walk Newbury St. in Boston, MA and select a specific kind of apparel to focus on and look at five different stores that carried the trending and innovative product for S/S 19. We chose to focus on shoes, specifically mules. Mules are shoes that are trending for the upcoming spring and summer seasons. They are very versatile, easy to wear, and there are many different innovations that can adhere to every style.

The five stores that we chose to look at on Newbury St. that had carried mules were Chanel, Burberry, Dolce & Gabbana, Valentino, and Rag & Bone. Each store carried a different innovation of the mule and we analyzed the trending factors for each style. Each mule chosen is for a target market with a large disposable income, as all of the stores are high-end and expensive. Below are the five mules that we selected and explored.

After analyzing each product, we compared them based on trend worthiness, target customer, and where the item was placed in the store. Where the item is located in each store is very crucial to how customers view the product and we saw that each store had placed their mules in different spots throughout the store they were in. I feel as though if a product is towards the front of the store or on a mannequin, customers are more likely to buy that product rather then if they were in the back of the store or on a shelf on a wall. My group and I also placed each pair of mules on a diffusion curve to where we believe each pair stands based on their adoption-worthy features and trend length.