As an established brand/retailer with a healthy spread of brick-and-mortar stores, in-season planning involves optimal inventory distribution to all points of sales. In-season planning can be categorized into, new season allocation, at the launch of the season, and mid-season replenishments and replacements. Planning involves budget allocation, trend analysis, past sales analysis, etc, which gets half of the job done, but the incorrect distribution leads to a failed season.
There are a lot of factors like store capacity, variety of options, depth of the style/SKU, grade of the store, assortment mix, etc. that are involved in optimally distributing the available stock across multiple points of sales (PoS). Incorrect allocation leads to overstocking, understocking, and loss of potential sales which affects the top and bottom line.
After the new season allocation, the inventory has to be replenished based on the current sales trends to keep the sales momentum going. The health of merchandise and identifying the right stock for the right store are major factors that have to be considered during the mid-season.
Since the whole process involves a lot of resources, time, and accuracy, new-age solutions like Increff Merchandising Solution can automate the process by reducing the number of resources required, the time taken for completing the process, and increasing the accuracy.
USPs
- Attribute Group-based new style allocation: Existing styles can be allocated based on their historic performance at the stores, which is not straightforward for the new styles that don’t have any sales history. MS Pro uses attribute group performance for new style allocation.
- Style-Store Ranking: Placing the right inventory at the right PoS is very important in catering to customer demand. MS Pro uses style-store ranking based on the historical performance of the style at the store and allocates the inventory to the best store followed by the second best, and so on.
- Maintaining inventory health: Inventory health plays a major role in the Rate of Sale (RoS). It is observed that the styles that don’t have important sizes available at PoS are unlikely to sell. MS Pro maintains inventory health by identifying the key sizes of a style during distribution.
- Individual PoS analysis: Every PoS, both online and offline, has a unique customer base and the behavior of the different points of sales is different. Grouping the PoS in clusters and analyzing clusters is not as effective. MS Pro considers each store to have an individual identity and defines the right assortment and key sizes based on past performance in that store for optimal inventory allocation.
- Maintaining fill rates at stores: Fill rate is the maximum inventory that can be stocked in a store. MS Pro maintains optimal fill rates at the store by using the planogram as a constraint.
- Seasonality-based assortment: Seasonality is an important concept in retail, especially in fashion as certain products have demand during a certain period. Eg., Jackets, sweaters, and other winterwear apparel are sold mainly during winters and have low demand during other seasons. MS Pro helps define the assortment plan based on the ongoing season.
- Rollup-based allocation: The allocation of the inventory is done at different levels when the right amount of data points is not available at any level. Eg., for any style, the data at store-AG is not available, a few rollups are done at the store-category level or store-category-subcategory level, and allocations are done at that level.
 Impacts Delivered
- 13% increase in-season full-price sell-through for one of the largest celebrity brands
- 25% revenue growth and 4% improvement in margin for one of the largest lingerie brand
- 13% reduction in inventory brokenness, for a leading formal wear brand
- Reduction in inventory holding from >120 days to 80 days for a leading lingerie brand
- 90% reduction in stock allocation & buying process for all the brands
- 13% improvement in stock health season on season, though regular replenishments and allocations for a leading formal wear brand
- 45% additional sales from the same set of styles with 34% reduction in brokenness through Inter Store transfers for a Global Men’s Casual-wear Brand
- ~21.5% reduction in inventory quantity for a targeted increase in revenue by 17.3% for one of the largest health and beauty marketplace
