This study aims to investigate and examine the mediating role of specialized marketing capabilities (SMC) in the relationship between market intelligence (MI) and business performance (BP) on Indonesia retail fashion SMEs. This study used 330 SMEs with maximum assets of 10 billion Indonesian Rupiah (IDR) and a maximum sales turnover of IDR 50 billion per year. We examined the relationship between MI dimensions: market intelligence generation (MIG), market intelligence dissemination (MID), and responsiveness to market intelligence (RMI) with SMC and BP by using a combination of SPSS and SEM with AMOS 22.0. A Sobel test was used to test the mediating role of SMC in the relationship between MI dimensions and BP. The results of the data analysis show that SMC has an important role as a partial mediator in the relationship between MIG, MID, and RMI with BP. This study suggests that owners or managers of SMEs recognize important market intelligence factors in increasing SMC and BP. This helps them make better investment decisions in developing the right combination of SMC to increase BP. This research integrates MI dimensions and one dimension of marketing capabilities, i.e. SMC, into an empirical model to gain a deeper understanding of the relationship between MI and SMC and how these factors form BP. KEYWORDS Business performance, market intelligence dissemination, market intelligence generation, responsiveness to market intelligence, specialized marketing capabilities