WWD Mentions First Insight | Tech Tuesday: Coppel Teams With First Insight
This week, we learn that Grupo Coppel, operator of one of Mexico’s largest department store chains, has partnered with predictive consumer intelligence platform First Insight to update the company’s merchandising and pricing strategies for its private-label apparel and footwear.
Mexico’s largest department store chain partners with First Insight
Grupo Coppel, which runs one of Mexico’s largest department store chains, said it has teamed up with First Insight, the predictive consumer intelligence platform, to power its private label apparel and footwear merchandising strategy across Coppel stores.
“Through First Insight’s AI decision tools, Coppel’s merchandising teams will translate predictive consumer signals into faster, more confident decisions about which private label products to develop, how to price them and where to invest in their assortment,” First Insight said in a statement, adding that the partnership supports the retailer’s broader $4.6 billion transformation growth strategy “and reflects Coppel’s continued commitment to keeping its customers at the center of its growth.”
Terms of the partnership were not disclosed.
First Insight said Coppel ran a pilot using its platform that was focused on women’s apparel, the retailer’s largest category. In that test run, 72 percent of styles “landed within the medium-to-high Value Score range, signaling a strong customer appeal across a broad base of products,” First Insight said in a statement, adding that the analysis also revealed pricing’s critical role in impacting purchase intent, “with a subset of products generating strong consumer sentiment that could be unlocked through pricing or positioning adjustments, giving Coppel’s team a more nuanced view of demand than sales data alone could provide.”
It is those data-driven insights that can help the merchandising team make better-informed decisions while also helping to refine the brand’s pricing strategies. And it also results in more satisfied shoppers.
“What stood out with First Insight was how intuitive and merchant-friendly the solution is, and their proven use cases in the market,” said Daniela Orduña, divisional merchandise director at Coppel. “The platform simplifies complex decisions so it’s immediately clear which products and assortments we should move forward with, and which need to go back to the drawing board. As we continue to invest in our digital transformation, having the customer voice inform our product and merchandising strategies is essential to achieving our 2030 goals.”
Through the First Insight platform, Coppel will optimize its operations by strengthening private label assortments, setting demand-informed prices to protect margins and refining channel strategies to match customer shopping habits.
Additionally, the retailer will integrate customer feedback directly into the early design stages, allowing teams to test and refine concepts before production. First Insight said that together, these capabilities will help Coppel reduce markdowns, improve sell-through and allocate investments more effectively across its retail channels.
For its part, the partnership with Coppel signals First Insight’s expansion across Latin America, which the company described as a region where leading retailers are accelerating digital transformation investments “and rethinking how consumer intelligence flows into merchandising, pricing and assortment.”
Viki Zabala, chief strategy and growth officer at First Insight, said Coppel “has built extraordinary trust with its customers over decades, and we’re honored to launch our Latin America expansion alongside them.”
“Their decision to ground private label merchandising in predictive consumer intelligence reflects the future of retail across the region—one where speed, confidence and customer relevance compound together,” Zabala said.
Read on WWD/Sourcing Journal.
