An apparel retailer’s assortment is defined by the type of products that are carried in each store at a particular point in time. Assortment planning is the process of determining the most appropriate merchandise to make up the stores assortment. The primary goal of assortment planning is to specify an assortment that will maximize the clothing stores sales or gross margin. Many issues must be considered for a store to make a proper determination. The thought process and decision is typically subject to several various conditions. These conditions may include issues such as a limited budget for purchase of products, limited available shelf space for displaying products, seasonal items, holiday selling cycles, and a variety of other miscellaneous constraints.
Clearly the assortment of merchandise a retailer carries in their brick & mortar store or online has a significant impact on sales and profit. Obviously a buyer does not want to have a large inventory of Christmas sweaters for sale in July. Determining “what product” and “how much product” is critical to success.
Due to this apparent importance assortment planning receives a high priority from retailers, software suppliers, and retail industry consultants.
Fashion retailers engage in assortment planning because they need to periodically revise their assortment. Several factors require a retailer to change their assortment, including seasons (the fall
assortment for an apparel retailer will be different from the spring assortment), the introduction of new products, brands, and trends based on changes in consumer tastes. Obviously, determining consumer tastes is not easy. Merchandisers often turn to professional trend forecasting companies to help them with decision making in this regard. Comments from these agents should be taken into account when planning the stores assortment.
Most retailers segment the stock keeping units (SKU) they carry into groups called categories. For example, a boutique may have a category for women’s accessories. Within that category, they may define subcategories such as purses, scarves, eyewear, etc. (terminology used varies across retailers for example; department, class and subclass may be used instead of category and subcategory, but the practice of grouping SKUs with similar attributes for planning purposes is for the most part universal.)
Retailers focus much of their energy on deciding what portion of their racks, wall space, or shelves are available at a particular time. They also must put much thought into their purchasing budget to determine how much money can be allocated to each department or category.
Given fixed store space (not an issue for online retailers) and financial resources, assortment planning requires a tradeoff between three elements:
how many different categories does the retailer carry (called a retailer’s breadth)
how many SKUs do they carry in each category (called depth)
how much inventory do they stock of each SKU (which obviously affects their in-stock rate).
The breadth verse depth tradeoff is a fundamental strategic choice faced by all retailers.
Department stores, elect to carry a large number of different categories. Others, such as shoe stores, jewelry stores, beauty product stores, specialize in a smaller number of categories. A shoe store will specialize in categories such as men’s shoes, women’s shoes, or children’s shows. But unlike a department store they can go into great depth in these primary categories.
Assortment planning has been around for a very long time, but we are now starting to study it in more clever ways. Technology has played an important role for sure. The academic approach to mastering this process is never ending. Each store has constant changing factors. Therefore, retailers must continuously study their plans and alter their plans based on changing conditions.
Here are a few key issues and terms to keep in mind.
Questions to be considered:
We hope that this introduction to assortment planning has been of help to you. If you are knowledgable about assortment planning and fulfillment please join in the discussions at the Fashion Industry Network or on one of the discussion areas here on Apparel Search.
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