Frame the collection and hold the buying budget.
In fashion and luxury, most of the buying budget is committed before the first sale. A framing error is then paid for in markdown, across the whole season.
What we hear
The topics that keep coming up in fashion and luxury.
These are the most frequent starting points of our assignments in the sector.
- The buying budget is set in one file, the collection is built in another, and the two diverge from the first iteration
- Buying sessions take place with no consolidated view of what is left to commit
- Assortment is decided at network level, not at store cluster level
- End-of-season residual stock is discovered too late to act on it other than through markdown
- Each subsidiary has its own forecasting logic, and group consolidation takes two weeks
In practice
A collection framing screen.
SKU count, depth and budget share are tracked by family and by market, with the gap to target shown continuously.
By family — share of buying budget
Split by market
Illustration of collection framing. Fictional data.
What we put in place
What we put in place in fashion and luxury.
Collection framing
SKU count, depth and split by family and market, arbitrated directly against the budget.
Open to buy
Real-time commitment tracking, by family and channel, with an alert as soon as the trajectory slips.
Assortment and clustering
Grouping stores by actual behaviour rather than by historical typology.
Supplier phasing
Production plan and delivery schedule aligned with on-sale dates.
Weekly plan
Week-by-week season tracking, with the forecast realigned on actual sales.
Residual stock steering
End-of-season stock projected early enough to act on it other than through markdown.