The Holy Grail - How does merchandise planning fits with the rest of the business?

Good Merchandise Planning achieves just two things for a retailer;

• Improves sales by reducing stock-outs so customers can buy the item they want in their size in their preferred colour, at full price.
• Improves margin by removing the amount of end-of-line stock that has to be sold at less than full price.

Having an extended January Sales is a distinct embarrassment for any retailer, as is running out of stock of a popular item on the last Friday before Christmas.

Poor merchandise planning can result from: -

• Buying too many of a new line, and leaving insufficient budget for strong basic items.
• Not buying enough, or buying too late for the season.
• Not getting the right assortment into each store – for example not selling swimwear in a resort store.
• Getting the size or colour mix wrong – for example sending too many large sizes to Scotland where people are generally smaller.

And so on – there are many ways to get the plan wrong, or for conditions to change in unexpected ways, but they all affect the two core issues.

Please contact us to find out more about our retail analytics and merchandise planning solution.