Strategic Solutions International (SSI) provides clients with category management, business development, customized market research, and integrated marketing services. It’s a firm that is “committed to delivering actionable business strategies that allow…clients to achieve and maintain competitive advantage in aggressive ever-changing markets,” according to ssiconsults.com.
Romina Brown founded the Chicago, Illinois – based company in 2004, and while her boutique consultancy caters to companies in and beyond beauty, it’s worth mentioning that Brown and her team work closely with several top brands in the African American hair care (AAHC) category.
New view
The (K)now! Strategic Data Solutions On-Demand Portal is a new tool the company is offering on a subscription basis. The platform is mobile and modern in every technical sense, but the real value add here is the uniquely broad spectrum of insights that SSI provides via the (K)now! portal.
The company is “closing the beauty industry data gap by offering meaningful insights from the beauty supply channel,” explains a press release about the new tool. The available data and insights run across consumer demographics and span several categories, including cosmetics, skin care, hair care, lashes, nails, and even accessories.
Brown took the initiative and made the investment to collect beauty supply store data because, as she tells Cosmetics Design, there was until now a “huge gap in intelligence.” Conventional retail data from market research firms tells only half of the consumer behavior / brand performance story, she says.
Data mining
The (K)now! portal is a gold mine of data that well-selling brands can leverage to gain more shelf space in any channel, that retailers can use to maximize their cosmetics and personal care business, and competitive companies can reference to innovate in meaningful ways.
At this month’s Cosmoprof event in Las Vegas, Nevada, Brown introduced and demonstrated the portal to select clients, press, and industry insiders. At an invite-only event in a suite at the Mandalay Bay, high above the main show floor, Brown talked through chart after chart of revelatory information from the independent beauty supply space including, category details, category comparison, price brand analysis, multinational impact, annual trends, and much more.
As Brown spoke, it was clear that she loves her work. “The fun is in drilling down,” she quipped as she found herself getting carried away with the data on just one of the slides. And throughout the demonstration, Brown shared key takeaways, like the fact that “African American hair care has [in recent years] contributed more to total market hair care growth than any other segment.”
It’s information like that which makes the name of the new SSI portal self-explanatory, as in ‘you know now!’