Playground →
DSW's nearest audiences span an unusually wide range of categories — apparel, dining, furniture, beauty services, pet care, and more — with no single neighbor pulling far ahead of the rest. Similarity here measures how closely two entities' audiences resemble each other in composition; the top 10 neighbors fall within a tight band from 0.92 down to 0.90, which is the defining feature of a flat shape.
The two highest-scoring neighbors are Men's Apparel (0.92) and Five Guys (0.92), followed closely by The Men's Wearhouse (0.92) and Music (0.91). That a fast-casual burger chain and a music retail category sit at nearly the same level as two menswear brands is the clearest signal in the data: this is not a footwear-shaped audience. No other Footwear entity appears in the top 10. Instead, the neighbor set is dominated by apparel (Men's Apparel, The Men's Wearhouse, LOFT at 0.91) alongside services (Cosmetic Services at 0.91, Hand and Stone at 0.90) and retail (Ethan Allen at 0.91, Bassett Furniture at 0.90). The subcategory mix — mens apparel, womens apparel, cosmetic services, furniture stores, fast casual dining — points to a broad, lifestyle-oriented audience rather than one organized around any single retail vertical.
The flat shape and the compressed score range together suggest DSW's audience is not structurally distinct from a wide swath of mainstream retail and service brands; it overlaps with many of them at roughly equal intensity.
