The Ask

Jellibeans, co-founded by industry veteran Joanne Chow, renowned for her lifestyle retail and distribution in Hong Kong and Greater China aimed to launch its AI-powered business intelligence B2B platform jelli.studio– an end-to-end solution for fashion houses and suppliers seeks to optimize collection ROI. The firm already established a solid B2C fashion discovery platform.

We had two major challenges we’d have to overcome for Jellibeans. First, it wasn’t exactly the first generative AI platform for creating fashion collections. CALA for example comes to mind. So that meant we didn’t have the benefit of claiming to be ‘the first’, which is often a go-to angle as CALA could have a stronger claim to this.

Second, the claim of having a large database alone we knew wouldn’t resonate on its own with the journalists. And part of this realization stems from our work with crypto startups. Once upon a time, back in 2017-2019, every company would aim to one-up their competitors, claiming that they had the highest Transactions Per Second (TPS) in the industry, leading to dilution of its meaning and significance. Talking about the size of a data set, not to mention in 2024, was no different.

Strategy

We had to think one level higher. Specifically, tie the size of the database to the key benefit of having a proprietary database of this size and caliber, within the context of competing databases in the market. This meant that it wasn’t the database size itself that was worth talking about. Rather it was a shift in the perception that we wanted to communicate. 

We centered Eleven International’s task around building a story around what impact the end beneficiaries (jelli.studio’s customers) would have from having a robust data set to work with in the first place. To refine the product’s positioning, we finally turned to 10 million retail data points that Jellibeans had amassed over several years. We made the objectively provable argument that Jelli.studio had the most robust independent database on the market – unlike most databases that were used solely for proprietary purposes like Farfetch or Shein and not open to consumers as a SaaS solution. Plus, it was arguably more quantifiably accurate than the industry leading trend forecasting service, WGSN.

Our approach was to tailor messaging to resonate with target publications of different verticals, including mainstream fashion, business of fashion, and technology sectors. Leveraging media hooks such as fundraising, product launch, industry history, and the female founder's story, we aimed to enhance Jellibeans' visibility and brand recognition.

Results

As a result of the effort by strategically combining information about the product, with the company’s fundraising, Eleven International had secured interview with tier 1 technology, tier 1 fashion and retail publications, which resulted in coverage in TechCrunch, Women’s Wear Daily, Yahoo!, Retail in Asia.

During our 3-month engagement with Jellibeans, our thought leadership program strategically secured interviews with leading fashion and retail publications, achieving coverage in e.g. Drapers, Fashion United, Modern Retail. By assisting with award submissions, notably for the Retail Technology Innovation Hub startup award,  we laid the groundwork for their growing visibility.

As our collaboration progressed, we further secured feature stories in retail, fashion and tech publications including WWD, Just Style, TechCrunch, Retail Technology Innovation, Daily Front Row and Grazia.