The everyday variety of Merchandise Planning methods and techniques

/ Merchandise Planning

The everyday variety of Merchandise Planning methods and techniques out there is really FUN to deal with!

Just this past Friday, I was lucky (and challenged) to use our Buyer’s Toolbox in a few distinct business process variations:

• Item Planning: a furniture and appliance chain with hundreds of stores is focused on detailed, bottom-up Item-level Unit Planning: Forecasting sales demand for individual Items, balancing their assortment and share contribution within individual collections, and optimizing incoming Receipt needs by week. I helped them figure out how to create new KPIs for forecasting future Stock positions, taking into account Backorders, Open POs and shipment delays – then instantly compare to stock service levels, enabling close management and tweaking of Vendor PO delivery dates. That took a couple of hours of user interviewing and formula writing…
• Financial Planning: a large national footwear and apparel chain has been trying to figure out how to prorate the value of FUTURE planned Perm and POS markdowns that matches Finance Dept projection. Looks like a mix of MD Stock to Total Stock can help w proration of Perm MD $, and some form of Stock IMU blended w Sales, Selling Price compared to Original Price – can help there. A real head-scratcher, but looks feasible. That took at least an hour. More formulas and data elements being added to their live Store/Week/Style database…
• Vendor Planning and Reporting: another customer – a large Farm and Fleet chain in the Midwest has added Vendor/Brand level data to their Toolbox database, and we worked on adding Vendor planning methods to their existing Category/Comp-NonComp, not to mention report automation, OP to NY forecast data migration and more. That took at least an hour…

I was blessed to have worked all day with Planners who are nice, do the work, and appreciate the impact.

Each solution required its’ own blend of user interviewing and needs discovery, retail industry knowledge, and creative problem-solving. It’s like solving a complex, interlocking puzzle every time. Live, while people are watching.

What fascinates me most is how these elements interconnect. A slight adjustment in unit planning can ripple through to vendor relationships and financial projections. It’s a delicate balance of art and science, where data-driven decisions meet intuition honed by years of experience.