Client Profile
YouApparel is a renowned online wholesale store well-known for its diverse collection of blank apparel. Whether it is active wear, formal office clothes, casual wear or accessories, you can get it all from YouApparel. You can get the products from leading brands like American Apparel, Hanes, Fruit of the Loom and Gildan. The company has gained market leadership by quality customer service, affordable pricing and hassle-free shopping experience.
Challenges
However, YouApparel encountered serious challenges in keeping track of how their competitors were performing in the same segment of online bulk clothing. The obstacles included:
- Difficulty in Competitor Product Identification: They did not have precise URLs of competitors’ products. So they had to manually locate their products using the product code and brand name across multiple competitor websites. It is obviously a tedious and unviable solution.
- Complex Product Variations: On the competitors’ websites, products may appear similar but they could be variations of the same product varying in size, colour or pricing. It added a layer of complexity to their task. So they needed a scraper that could extract the data regarding all variations of products in a precise manner.
- Data Transformation Requirements: The client also needed a highly specific template in which data related to pricing vis-a-vis various sizes etc. could be made available in an easy-to-analyze manner.
- In-House Scraper Limitations: They had an in-house scraping solution but it did not yield desired results. It took up 30% of their data team’s time and they also got blocked by competitor sites a number of times. They obviously needed a more robust and powerful scraper.
Solution
ProWebScraper designed a tailored solution consisting of:
- Price Matching Engine: Using a powerful algorithm, ProWebScraper made it possible to search the whole SKU and brand names across competitor sites. With this, it was possible to identify precise product matches for data extraction to be done.
- Advanced Web Scraping Capabilities: To make the data extraction comprehensive, a tailored scraper was developed that can scrape data in terms of variations in terms of size, colour, and quantity from 10 different competitor websites.
- Data Transformation: To make scraped data available in the format of choice for the client, we developed a specialized script too. This enabled them to refine their data analysis process.
Results
ProWebScraper’s solution provided the following key results:
- Accurate Competitor Price Reports: Using the comprehensive data generated related to pricing information of varied products, the client was now able to directly work out their pricing strategies.
- Time Efficiency: This kind of sophisticated solution saved 30% of their time which was being invested in getting hold of pricing data. They could now utilize that in the developing business strategy and future plans.
- Enhanced Competitive Analysis: Retail apparel market is about competitor analysis and pricing strategy. Our custom solution enabled them to monitor the competitors in terms of pricing strategies in a real-time manner and price their products accordingly.
Conclusion
ProWebScraper’s tailored solution enabled YouApparel to gain access to strategically vital competitors’ pricing data. This not only transformed their web scraping process but also gave them key business insights for acceleration in business growth in spite of the competitive nature of the retail market.
