Jack Stratten is Director at Insider Trends and a RETHINK Retail Top Retail Expert 2025. Through Insider Trends, he helps the world's biggest retail brands understand what's coming next. We spoke with Jack about the forces reshaping fashion retail and what they mean for pricing strategy, markdown management, and technology adoption.
Markmi: When you talk about what's happening in fashion retail right now, you point to several major forces. What are they, and how do they fit together?
Jack: Maybe there are different kinds of hierarchies to these changes or trends. And I feel that saturation is fundamental.
Saturation is like ground zero in the West, because it affects everything. It influences how consumers journey, how they find things or don't find things. It influences retail strategies, because honestly most large retailers now have product ranges that are almost too big for their own stores. Or when it comes to online, too big to easily navigate. Too much choice resulting in choice overload.
But at the same time, there are probably other comparably big things happening. Infrastructure is one. Big traditional fashion players like Zara, H&M have to build a future where their physical stores still play a central role, because their value as a business is closely linked to their real estate. You see this in America where giants like Saks and Macy's survive largely because of building values. Whatever choice they make, they have to build a future with stores in it.
Then there is the supply chain. Entire cities and towns built on textile manufacturing in Bangladesh might have to close because of rising costs and climate change. Companies without diversified supply networks will face forced price increases.
And there is product discovery. How consumers find brands and products has completely changed. TikTok, AI-driven recommendations, visual search. The old playbook of controlling the customer journey through your own channels doesn't work anymore.
Markmi: These trends seem almost overwhelming. Where do retailers actually have control?
Jack: That's the interesting thing. Pricing is really the crucial lever fashion retailers still control.
They can't control saturation. They can't get rid of their stores. Supply chains remain challenging. Discovery happens on platforms they don't own. But pricing? Starting prices, markdown strategy, how you position discounts, which channels get what prices - they control all of that. It becomes the crucial element you have to focus on.
Markmi: In a saturated market, how do successful retailers differentiate?
Jack: The winners are creating niches. Not trying to be everything to everyone. Look at Uniqlo. They're not fast fashion, they're not luxury. They've carved out "affordable luxury basics". They combine high quality and functional design with accessible price. That positioning is so clear that they can charge more than H&M but less than COS, and nobody questions it.
Or look at brands like On Running or Lululemon. They took athletic wear and created subcategories: running shoes that look good enough for casual wear, yoga pants that became lifestyle apparel. They're not competing with Nike on Nike's terms. They're creating new categories where they can own the positioning.
The problem is when legacy brands try to do this. H&M tried to elevate. But when you've spent decades training consumers that you're the cheap option, it's very hard to convince them you're now worth more. Your brand equity is what it is.
Markmi: What makes the difference between successful repositioning and failed attempts?
Jack: Consistency and commitment. Uniqlo didn't just raise prices one season and hope for the best. They rebuilt their entire value proposition from better fabrics over collaborations with designers to stores that feel premium but accessible. Everything aligned.
Compare that to retailers who just... raise prices and hope nobody notices. Or they do a collaboration with a high-end designer but the rest of the range is still the same quality it always was. Consumers aren't stupid. They know when you're trying to charge more without delivering more.
Markmi: What's the biggest pricing mistake you see retailers making?
Jack: The pricing race to the bottom. Thinking that if you just discount aggressively enough, you'll win market share. But you're training consumers to never pay full price. You're eroding your own brand equity. And you're still not making money because your costs didn't go down.
The other big mistake is thinking starting price doesn't matter. It does. Uniqlo can sell a basic t-shirt for £12.90 because they've built a brand that justifies that price for a basic. H&M might sell something similar for £5.99. It's not about the cost of goods. It's about what the brand allows you to charge.
Markmi: How do you execute markdowns without cheapening the brand?
Jack: IKEA is the masterclass here. They don't markdown aggressively in-season. They have "as-is" sections for damaged or discontinued items, clearly separated from the main showroom. The message is clear: this is a different category of product, not a signal that our regular prices are negotiable.
Compare that to John Lewis. They're a legendary British heritage brand, famous for their window displays. On Black Friday, they put 60% off in those windows. And my criticism wasn't the 60% off, that's fine. It was the window. Don't lead with clearance in the one place that reminds people what a great brand you are.
The consumer paradox right now is that budgets are tight, but the appetite for quality hasn't gone away. They'll wait for sales, but they want to buy brands that make them feel like they're getting quality. So you have to markdown strategically. Clear end-of-season, outlet channels, whatever. But protect the full-price perception.
Markmi: There's a lot of retail technology being pitched right now. What actually adds value versus what's just noise?
Jack: I think we've moved from the flashy stuff - AR fitting rooms, robot shop assistants - to the pragmatic stuff. What actually helps retailers make better decisions or operate more efficiently?
The valuable tech solves real problems. Inventory visibility across channels so you're not overstocked in one place and out of stock in another. Demand forecasting so you're buying smarter. Customer data platforms that actually help you understand who's buying and why, not just give you more dashboards to ignore.
The gimmicky stuff is tech for tech's sake. It looks good in a pitch deck but doesn't move the business forward.
Markmi: Where do markdown optimization tools fit into that?
Jack: That's a good example of the pragmatic side. Markdown management is a real problem. You've got thousands of SKUs across multiple channels, different regional pricing rules, seasonality, competitor moves. Doing that in Excel is madness at scale.
A tool that can forecast demand by SKU, simulate different markdown scenarios, and recommend optimal timing and depth, is solving an actual problem. It's not sexy. Nobody's writing blog posts about how exciting markdown optimization is. But it directly impacts margin, which is the whole game right now.
What you're doing at Markmi is exactly the kind of retail technology I believe in. It's not gimmicky. It solves a real problem, an old, archaic way of doing things that takes too long and is too hard to scale. Honestly, this should have existed ten years ago.
Markmi - April 2026