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Are you constantly faced with a battle to safeguard and preserve your product margins amidst the chaotic times that we face today? Do rigid processes and a lack of agility prevent you from seizing valuable sales opportunities? The fashion and retail industry has always been plagued with challenges.
However, there is now the added turmoil caused by supply chain disruptions, energy crises, and inflation. This means merchandise planning faces immense pressure to ensure the timely delivery of the right products.
To overcome these challenges, it is essential to optimise your internal merchandise planning processes. This will enable you to respond swiftly to external cries that may affect your company. But how can you enhance these processes to shield your fashion and retail business from external risks?
This blog will look at how modern planning systems can optimise business operations while eliminating manual tasks. What advantages could these improvements bring to your business? What are the potential risks if you neglect effective planning?
Continue reading to uncover why fashion and retail brands must invest in retail planning today.
Sell More at Full Price and Increase Margins
Fashion and retail brands often turn to price markdowns when feeling with excess inventory. This results in negative effects on profits and margins. The frequent reduction in prices can also harm brand reputation by undermining customer perception of the product value.
Retail Planning, with real-time data and simulations, helps teams be more accurate and agile with forecasting. This provides clear visibility of product locations amidst shifting market dynamics and external influences.
With an integration solution, gaining comprehensive insights into in-season performance and trends becomes effortless. Brands can effectively connect with customers, understanding their preferences and precisely meeting their expectations.
Allocate and Replenish Products with a Dynamic Inventory
Inadequate retail planning solutions lead to difficulties in managing store operations, particularly excessive inventory. When stock allocation is inaccurate, companies face mismatches between product assortments and store clusters. This results in waste, unnecessary expenses for stock reallocation, and missed sales opportunities.
Put an End to Overbuying and Gain Control
Insufficient digital forecasting tools can lead to costly overbuying and overproduction. The accumulation of excess inventory becomes a significant liability. This results in reduced margins, uninformed budgeting, and higher storage costs.
Retail planning helps to achieve the right product quantities and assortments. This guarantees accurate financial objectives, increases sales at full price, and optimises collections. By using a planning solution, teams can predict future demand, forecast sales based on seasons, and optimise inventory.
Eliminate Spreadsheets and Organisational Chaos
Say goodbye to spreadsheets and the chaos that they bring! With planning and forecasting, relying on spreadsheets and manual data entry can lead to complications. It can be an error-prone process, making it challenging to provide decision-makers with accurate overviews and roll-ups.
With Retail Planning, data consolidation, and synchronisation are seamless. It provides teams with real-time information throughout the planning and product development stages. Merchandise plans can be swiftly created, and sharing roll-ups and overviews is just a click away. The flexible analytics of an integrated planning system enables the creation of visual line plans.
These plans can be easily shared across the company, speeding up the entire planning and product development cycle.
Effortlessly Plan Assortments Amidst Changing Complexities
Accurate assortment planning relies on several factors. These factors vary from store count to regional variations. Outdated tools and fragmented information lead to guesswork and unreliable demand forecasts.
A modern planning system ensures customer demands are met by delivering the right product assortment to the right palace at the right time. Streamlined capabilities offer real-time data in one central location, facilitating easy assortment planning.
Comprehensive visibility into complex factors allows for granular planning and facilitates quick decision-making. The outcome is improved planning accuracy and better alignment with decisions, vision, and execution.
Conclusion
Retail Planning solutions enable brands to forecast demand, optimise stock management and vendor replenishment. With robust and up-to-date data, we can ensure the right quantities of products are available while streamlining selling.
By embracing Retail Planning, you can save time, reduce costs, and enhance margins, future-proofing your brand for success!