Insights
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Evaluating the role of Assortment planning in retail
Content Inventory is the largest single ongoing capital investment for most retailers. Therefore, it is vital to mimise the risk from inventory excess, while ensuring sufficient supply for items that sell well. This is no easy task. It requires an active process that regularly reviews stock velocity and dynamically adjusts budgets to ensure spending occurs
Departmental integration: the key to meeting consumer demand
Content Merchandisers form a vital link between the supply chain and the consumer, with Marketing and Sales activities helping to make that final connection to the merchandise itself. However, merchandisers find themselves in an endless cycle of merchandise planning, year after year. Without much control over the broader supply process, their role has become more
Retail as a factory – or many factories
Content In the last thirty years, consumers of fashion merchandise have become spoilt for choice on where, how and when to buy. This has fragmented the retail network into a less and less predictable, omnichannel landscape, where the winners are standing out by their agility, or their ability to respond to increasingly fickle consumer demand.
Demand forecasting: 5 best practices to deal with volatile demand
Content As consumer sentiment (and buying behaviour) now shifts more quickly than ever before, it has become practically impossible for fashion retailers to produce a meaningful demand forecast. Collections are still typically produced many months in advance, meaning the potential margin of forecast error widens over time with increasing uncertainty about real demand. It can
The impact of Data, Analytics, and Business Intelligence in fashion retail
Content Big data makes some big promises, yet many retailers are still failing to see the potential rewards of digitalization. Despite collecting vast amounts of valuable data, many organisations fail to convert their data into business intelligence, especially in retail. Instead, data is either allowed to simply accumulate in departmental silos, or it’s used to
Visual Merchandising: New approaches in the digital age
Content What is visual merchandising? Fashion retailers have relied on visual merchandising to display their products and entice shoppers since ‘shopping’ was invented. The practice of visual merchandising aims to show potential buyers specific qualities of a product, or to show it in a certain context to encourage a sale. Window displays are one of