WGSN (formerly Worth Global Style Network) is a
trend forecasting company of
parent organisation Ascential
Ascential plc, formerly EMAP, is a British business-to-business media business specialising in exhibitions & festivals and information services. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
History
Ric ...
. WGSN was founded in 1998 in
West London
West London is the western part of London, England, north of the River Thames, west of the City of London, and extending to the Greater London boundary.
The term is used to differentiate the area from the other parts of London: North Londo ...
by brothers Julian and
Marc Worth. Emap (now
Ascential
Ascential plc, formerly EMAP, is a British business-to-business media business specialising in exhibitions & festivals and information services. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 250 Index.
History
Ric ...
), a
business-to-business publisher and exhibitions company, bought the company in October 2005 for £140m.
Recent history
In 2013, WGSN merged with its biggest competitor, Stylesight. Like WGSN, Stylesight had a vast library of
fashion forecasting
Fashion Forecasting Overview
Fashion forecasting is a global career that focuses on upcoming fashion trends. A fashion forecaster predicts the colours, patterns, fabrics, textures,materials, prints, graphics, beautyégrooming, accessories, foot ...
, trend information, archival photos, and even sketches and patterns for
designer
A designer is a person who plans the form or structure of something before it is made, by preparing drawings or plans.
In practice, anyone who creates tangible or intangible objects, products, processes, laws, games, graphics, services, or exp ...
s to use. Keeping the WGSN name, the new product has been designed around the technology developed by Stylesight and launched in 2014.
In February 2016,
Ascential plc, an international media company that includes WGSN in its portfolio, was the subject of an £800m
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investme ...
.
Products
As an online service, the business derives its
revenue
In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business.
Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive reven ...
s from six different product
subscriptions (WGSN Insight, WGSN Fashion, WGSN Lifestyle & Interiors, WGSN Barometer, WGSN Instock, WGSN Styletrial), a custom advisory business (WGSN Mindset) and a global series of events (WGSN Futures).
See also
*
Coolhunting
Coolhunting is a neologism coined in the early 1990s referring to a new kind of marketing professionals who make observations and predictions in changes of new or existing "cool" cultural fads and trends. Coolhunting is also referred to as "tre ...
*
Extrapolation
In mathematics, extrapolation is a type of estimation, beyond the original observation range, of the value of a variable on the basis of its relationship with another variable. It is similar to interpolation, which produces estimates between know ...
*
Technology forecasting
Technology forecasting attempts to predict the future characteristics of useful technological machines, procedures or techniques. Researchers create technology forecasts based on past experience and current technological developments. Like other ...
References
External links
*
{{company-stub
Ascential
Forecasting
Companies based in New York City
Cultural trends
Market research organizations
Street fashion