Julia Fowler
Co-founder of the retail analytics company EDITED
Julia Fowler is a former fashion designer who co-founded EDITED, the retail market intelligence company, after growing frustrated with the industry's lack of factual data. Her idea of combining online retail data with traditional forecasting helped make data-led merchandising mainstream in fashion.
| Role | Co-founder of EDITED |
|---|---|
| Background | Former fashion designer |
| Co-founder | Geoff Watts |
| Organisation | EDITED, London |
| Known for | Data-led merchandising |
Who is Julia Fowler?
Julia Fowler is a London-based entrepreneur and the co-founder of EDITED, which collects and analyses product and pricing data from retailers around the world. Unlike many technology founders, she came from inside the fashion industry: she trained and worked as a designer before turning to software. She has served as EDITED's chief operating officer, and the company appears in industry listings of female-founded AI and e-commerce businesses in Europe.
Career
According to her professional profile, Fowler was frustrated as a designer that the industry made big decisions without factual data. She conceived the idea of combining online industry data with traditional forecasting methods, and about two years later, together with Geoff Watts, turned it into EDITED, which was set up in London at the end of the 2000s. Watts served as chief executive in the early years, while Fowler brought first-hand knowledge of how design and buying teams work.
EDITED has since grown into a company with a full executive team. Doug Kofoid has been chief executive since 2022, and the company has taken in DynamicAction, another retail analytics business.
Influence on the fashion business
Fowler's central argument was that design, buying and merchandising should be based on evidence about what is selling, at what price and where. EDITED's database now covers about 90,000 brands and more than 5 billion SKUs tracked daily. Typical uses include:
- Benchmarking prices and discounts against competitors
- Spotting gaps or overcrowding in an assortment
- Following how a trend develops across retailers
- Checking how quickly new products sell out
By translating the needs of designers and buyers into software, she helped bridge the gap between creative teams and data teams, a gap that many fashion companies still find difficult.
Julia Fowler and technology
EDITED is built on large-scale data collection and product classification. It now promotes an AI+ approach with conversational intelligence, automated reporting and integrations with AI assistants such as Claude, ChatGPT and Copilot, extending the founders' original idea of putting retail data directly into the hands of decision makers.
Why it matters
Fowler is an example of a fashion insider who identified a structural problem in the industry and solved it with data. As generative AI tools enter design and merchandising, her early insistence on factual market data looks increasingly central to how fashion companies plan.
Frequently asked questions
Who is Julia Fowler?
Julia Fowler is a former fashion designer who co-founded the retail analytics company EDITED with Geoff Watts. She has served as its chief operating officer and is known for bringing data into fashion design and buying decisions.
Why did Julia Fowler start EDITED?
As a designer she was frustrated by the fashion industry's lack of factual data. She developed the idea of combining online retail data with traditional forecasting, which became EDITED.