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Merchandise planning
Merchandise financial planning that reaches the store
Strategic, channel and budget plans, open-to-buy and in-season control. Then assortment, space and store clusters that turn the budget into the right product in each store.
| Strategic plan | top-down |
| Sales channel plan | bottom-up |
| Budget, WSSI | middle-out |
| In-season management | weekly |
Retail calendar 4-5-4, rolling, with 2 to 3 years of history and 2 to 3 years forward.
Typical symptoms we fix
Most retailers we meet plan in spreadsheets that do not talk to each other. Targets from the board do not reach category and store level, and the season is managed by gut feeling.
- No standard planning process across departments
- No single view of all plans and versions
- Inefficient workflows, plans e-mailed as files
- Board targets weakly anchored in the organisation
- Weak in-season management and late reactions
- Blurred line between planning and execution
Merchandise financial planning (MFP)
One plan, four levels, one version of the truth
We design and implement the full planning model: the strategic plan set top-down, channel plans built bottom-up for stores, e-commerce and wholesale, the budget reconciled middle-out in a weekly sales, stock and intake plan (WSSI), and in-season management against open-to-buy.
What is included
- Sales, margin, markdown, stock and intake planning in value and units
- Open-to-buy that keeps buying reactive to the latest trends
- Store count, square metres, like-for-like and new store plans, new stores planned from similar stores
- E-commerce planned on its own drivers: traffic, conversion, basket, fulfilment and lagged returns
- Plan versions, pre-population, reconciliation between levels and variance analysis
- Warehouse and supplier budget views, first margin versus actual margin
- Around 30 KPIs across product, organisation, calendar and seasonality
From baseline to in-season
Baseline, sales and margin targets, stores and m2, like-for-like, approval, sales and markdown plan, receipts and stock, warehouse plan, in-season re-forecast.
- Higher gross margin, markdown budget planned before buying
- Lower stock at the end of season
- Faster reaction thanks to detailed open-to-buy
- Unit planning makes the price policy realistic
Delivered in 13 to 26 weeks
We deliver MFP in stages, an MVP first, and our rollouts have finished on time and on budget.
- Analysis3 to 6 weeks of workshops, processes and data
- Prototype2 to 4 weeks, plans on your real data
- Configuration4 to 8 weeks, MVP1, MVP2, final
- Testing3 to 4 weeks, integration and user acceptance
- Go-live1 to 4 weeks of deployment and support
| Client | Segment | Scope | Duration |
|---|---|---|---|
| MIG | Sports lifestyle retail | Merchandise financial planning | 13 weeks |
| eobuwie.pl | Fashion e-commerce | Merchandise financial planning | 15 weeks |
| CCC | Footwear retail | Merchandise financial and assortment planning | 20 weeks |
| Sportina | Apparel retail, 11 countries | Merchandise financial planning | 20 weeks |
| Half Price | Off-price retail | Channel plan and open-to-buy MVP | MVP |
Assortment and category management
The right mix for every format and store
We give each category a role and a strategy, then build assortments that maximise sales and margin with the least stock. Many formats, limited space, cannibalisation and growing numbers of variants are handled with clear rules instead of intuition.
- Category roles: destination, routine, occasional, convenience
- Strategies and tactics per category: traffic, transaction building, profit, cash, image
- Product priority index and ABC classification
- Customer decision trees, demand transfer and cannibalisation analysis
- Core, flexi and promo assortment blocks per store grade
- Listing and de-listing rules, what-if simulation within space and budget
- Item plan from attributes to block, grade, budget fit, order and initial allocation
Know where you start
We assess category management on four levels, from basic to visionary, across participants, frequency, inputs, outputs, automation and integration, and agree the target level with you.
Definition to review
Definition, role, assessment, scorecard, strategy, tactics, implementation and review, run as a repeatable process.
Space, capacity and store clusters
Stock has to fit the store. We plan space and capacity from division to shelf and group stores so each one gets an assortment it can actually sell.
Profit per square metre
- Macro space per division and category with a scorecard of sales, units, capacity, margin and rotation
- Space elasticity curves and what-if against KPIs
- Furniture library with capacity in units, linear metres, m2 and m3
- Micro plan: pre-season assortment tailored to the space in each store
- Monthly updates when stores and furniture change
Groups that match real demand
- Separate clusters for each department
- Weighted by space, rotation and store working days
- Variable group sizes and promotion of efficiency leaders
- Density-based methods instead of equal splits
- A dedicated tool instead of spreadsheets