Christine Russo in conversation with Michaela Wessels, CEO and Co-Founder of Style Arcade

Michaela Wessels CEO and Co-Founder of Style Arcade joined Christine Russo to break down what is arguably one of the most persistent and costly gaps in fashion retail: the inability to forecast at the depth the industry actually needs. Wessels explained how most tools, including those that market themselves as AI based, stop at the category level and cannot address the real issue, which is the constant missed revenue tied to out of stocks by size and by store. Her team quantified forty one million dollars in lost revenue across ten brands in six months, all tied to invisible size level stockouts. Wessels noted that fashion data sets are uniquely small and uneven, which makes generic AI unreliable, and that real forecasting must remain transparent and controllable for users who understand the product and the sales pattern.

Throughout the discussion, Wessels made it clear that Style Arcade was built by people who have worked inside fashion and lived through the manual processes that have held the industry back. She described years spent forecasting hundreds of products in spreadsheets without the ability to model by size or store, which forced planners into overly broad decisions that created both bloated inventory and unnecessary markdowns. Unlike horizontal SaaS platforms that try to retrofit solutions for multiple industries, Wessels believes vertical SaaS built by industry operators is the only model that truly works because it reflects how fashion teams think and how decisions get made. Russo underscored this point by noting that many tech companies lack retail experience entirely, which creates a gap that no amount of engineering can solve.

Wessels also highlighted how Style Arcade is now used far beyond planning teams. Marketers, designers, e commerce leads, and product teams are all using the platform to understand where demand outpaces supply and to trigger reorders with clarity and speed. The tool gives them visibility into what is new, what is selling, where stockouts are suppressing performance, and how much revenue is at stake. Wessels emphasized that modern retail teams want tools that remove the friction of spreadsheets and surface decisions in a way that empowers talent rather than replacing it. With clients ranging from Ralph Lauren to hypergrowth pure plays, she frames the new forecasting product as essential infrastructure for a fashion landscape that can no longer afford to accept missed revenue as part of the job.