The fashion game is like a hurdles sprint.....
The fashion game is a complex puzzle with a few competitors:
- Short product life cycle: due to seasonality and fashion trends collections are continuously renewed.
- Mark down mechanisms act as margin killers
- Multi channel sales forces each retailer to have stock available anytime and anywhere
Districon developed many different solutions based on analytics together with Global and European fashion retailers based on this picture:
The picture divides the season in a few stages. In each stage a retailer has to act differently:
- Allocation: In the first stage it is of huge importance to optimally allocate the right quantities to the right outlets. How to forecast your sell out of a new collection in the first weeks per store? Which quantities are shipped to stores and what volumes remains available centrally? What data is available and useful as forecasting input?
- Replenishment: In the second stage you have gained the first sell out insights. This new data can be added to your forecasting model to decide each day what stores get new replenishments. A wrong decision hurts as you need the balance the risk of local stock outs versus mark downs in case of local overstock. Where is your optimal sales and margin opportunity?
- Transfers: In the last stage of the selling season a retailer has the opportunity to transfer left overs per store to other stores with higher sales chances for a particular style. Transfers are expensive but the mark down remains the highest margin killer
- Returns: Sales season is over, new styles are coming in. How to deal with your left overs. Based on scenario planning it is possible to make the trade off between further mark downs or invest in a second life, for example in the outlet stores.
Districon wants to share our demo's with you. Depending on your analytics capabilities we can start exploring your opportunities, for example by providing insights. Or we improve your capabilities by implementing advanced analytics solutions.
Please get in contact with us.