News

Retail Top 100 2012, No. 98: Guess

May 1, 2012

Despite weak holiday sales, Guess has made a "conscious decision" to cut down on markdowns and promotions. "We cannot and we would not continue to go in that direction," says CEO Paul Marciano. The company, which generates more than 40 percent of its sales from Europe, expects a challenging year ahead as the sovereign debt crisis moves closer to the heart of the eurozone. Guess is now banking on store expansion in North America and growth in Asia to help drive profits and offset the weakness in Europe. The trend-defining apparel retailer is among the first in line to try using Microstrategy's Gateway for Facebook analytics to tap into Guess's one million Facebook fans and nudge its social media marketing conversion rate above the typical tenth of a percent mark. The Microstrategy gateway opens the possibility of using Facebook as a CRM database, says Guess CIO Michael Relich. Incorporating Facebook data into customer profiles will relieve Guess from probing too deeply into customer preferences when they sign up for the loyalty program, something many shoppers dislike. By pulling shopper data from Facebook, Guess expects to enrich its customer profiles and keep them automatically up to date.

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