KAPADA
The buy, before the guess
Every brand decides how much to make months before anyone buys it. Half the time, the number is wrong.
Not because anyone is careless. Because the decision is made from a spreadsheet, a memory of last season and a trend report written for everyone. Then it locks, long before a single customer sees the product.
$70 to $140 billion. What the industry made in one year and could not sell.
Two and a half to five billion pieces of excess stock, by the industry’s own estimate. And the bill keeps running: holding unsold stock costs a brand roughly a fifth to a third of its value every year, before a single markdown.
The markdown is the part that lingers. Discount a third of the range and you teach your customer that full price is the wrong price, so next season’s full-price sell-through falls too. One collection can do that to a brand.
We don’t tell you what’s trending. We tell you what works on you.
Kapada Studios works on one decision: how much to make.
We started with an observation. Every brand we spoke to made the buy from a spreadsheet, a memory of last season and a trend report that told every other brand the same thing. The better signal was already inside the building: two seasons of what actually sold, by size and by style. Nobody was reading it properly.
We are building the tool that does. The idea is simple to say and hard to do: a number per size, with the evidence beside it, so the most sceptical person in the room can ask why and get an answer.
Every brand that makes things before it knows who will buy them.
Which is every brand. A two-person label and a hundred-person house make the same bet, months out, with the same tools. Three people in that building carry the number, and each of them gets something different from us.
You sign the buy and carry the cash that sits in stock.
A number per size, per style, and the reason for it, written so you could defend it to anyone who asks.
You want to know why, and you are right to ask.
No score on your work, ever. A record of what your customers actually did with it, size by size, colour by colour.
You already do this in a spreadsheet. It should do more.
The history you have does more of the work, and shows it. Rate of sale, size curves, what came back, in one place.
What the buy should look like.
Five ideas we work from →A number per size.
A quantity per size, per style, resting on what your customers actually did rather than on a hunch. Every number should be able to say where it came from.
Your signal first.
Trend reports tell every brand the same thing. We weight what happened inside your brand above what is happening outside it, and let you move that balance yourself.
“Why did you say that?”
Every number should open to the observations behind it. How many pieces, how many seasons, which sizes moved first. Written for the sceptic in the room, because that is who should press it.
The hindcast.
Before anyone trusts a number, it gets run against a season that has already happened. Where it would have been right, where it would have missed, in the open.
What it refuses.
No scores, no grades, no verdict on anyone’s creative work. Where the data cannot support a number, it should say so and recommend a cautious first buy.
We would rather build it with you than for you.
You tell us how the number gets made today.
Who decides, what they look at, when it locks. We listen. No deck, no pitch.
You share what sold, by size and style. We run it back.
Then we walk you through it, line by line: where it would have been right, and where it would have missed.
One drop, with the evidence beside every number.
If it is not better than your spreadsheet, you keep the spreadsheet.
Early partners shape what gets built. There is no price list yet, on purpose: we are still learning what this should cost a brand and what it saves, and the brands who work with us now set that with us. What we may do with your data is written down at the start, never discovered later.
Build it with usIf you make the buy, we want to build this with you.
Founder, buyer or designer, anywhere in the world. Tell us who you are and what you make. A person reads every message and a person replies.