Barney’s New York, the shopping haven for chic (and loaded) ladies on New York’s Upper East Side, is getting smart about its website.

The company has retained a company named Proclivity to help it identify and leverage shopping patterns captured on barneys.com.

Proclivity was started by a genetics scientist named Sheldon Gilbert.  After moving into the private sector, projects involving the websites for J.Crew, Best Buy and MSLO made him realize how much site data is wasted.  Describing scientists as “pattern hunter[s],” Gilbert created a proprietary system to look for online behavioral patterns.  The system is self-learning.  Barney’s is Proclivity’s first client.

With Proclivity’s help, Barney’s can now look at spending behavior through many different filters.  An online customer who has bought a necklace, bottle of shampoo and vase may not have yielded any meaningful information in the past, but Proclivity can identify the fact that all the items were on sale when purchased and tell the system to send this customer emails calling out sales and specials.  If the customer’s shopping behavior changes, so will the emails he/she will automatically receive.  Proclivity can identify other kinds of patterns, such as order of purchase (do women buy shoes before or after hosiery?) and products most likely to be bought together, such as handbags and wallets. 

Just as Barney’s VP of e-commerce did, most of us should view a new whiz-bang system with caution.  But with response rates 10x higher than before and a plan to integrate store shopping behavior into the system,  I don’t need Gilbert’s degree in biophysics to predict that Proclivity is going to see a lot more retail business in the future.
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