How Customer Insight Can Lead To Brands People Love

How Who What Wear cofounder Katherine Power turned an online fashion community into a brand factory.

- Elizabeth Segran

This past May, Target debuted Versed, a 19-piece skincare line free of 1,300 toxic ingredients, priced at less than $20 per item, and packaged in sleek mint-green, teal-blue, and pink tubes and bottles. It’s the latest brainchild of Katherine Power, the co-founder and CEO of Clique Brands, which includes 16 million–person online fashion community Who What Wear and a number of retail lines. Power began her career as an editor at Elle magazine, but found a new media-business model in turning reader insights into e-commerce and products. In 2016, she cocreated the Who What Wear clothing line, sold exclusively at Target. In 2017, she partnered with Target on its in-house activewear brand, Joylab. Now she’s applying her trove of consumer insights to Versed, the first spin-off company of Who What Wear. Here’s her playbook for launching affordable, breakthrough brands.

TALK TO YOUR (FUTURE) CUSTOMERS

Power has a six-person team exclusively focused on studying data from the