5 strategies businesses can use for merchandise planning
Businesses today only achieve efficiency in operation after developing the right merchandising planning. Merchandise planning is a way of choosing; managing, buying, displaying, and properly pricing the merchandise that your business deals in. Failing to plan is planning to fail, especially in the retail industry. The benefits of merchandising planning however include experiencing alleviated markdowns of stock and amplifying the revenue received. You can also get better inventory turnover including its costs since all the unwanted inventory is handled accordingly. For proper merchandise planning, here are some of the useful steps to consider.
Post-season analyses are crucial
Understanding the past and present of your business will allow you to make the right plans for your merchandise. Before commencing any new season, businesses are needed to analyze how the immediate last season was concluded. Observe aspects like the total sales that were made and most importantly the items that brought in the most revenue. Using the numbers of the past seasons, a business can easily determine the trend to focus on and where to amplify its strength. Such insights are useful for businesses to improve their accuracy in decision-making and stock predictions.
Forecast your sales
One of the important steps in your merchandise planning includes doing a post-season analysis where you will get the data to use for proper forecasting. The products that you deal in need to have sales potential predictions predetermined before another new season. You also need to have a market analysis done to determine the actual demand for the products and most importantly how the demand curve will be shifting in the near future. This is easily achieved when you combine useful data from your past seasons along with the present data along with the trends in the market. This should guide you on the right amount of items to purchase as stock based on your predictions.
Control merchandise
There has to be a balance between the stock that you purchase for buy and sales. For the business to achieve the same mark creating regular sales reports within the day or week might be the first step. By making such reports the business ensures there is enough new stock ordered before the depletion of the existing stock. In your reordering of the stock, sales reports will help you avoid ordering more stock than you need to lead to excess. It also ensures that you have just the right amount of stock to handle whatever orders that you get currently and in the near future.
Have planned and properly executed assortment
As a business, you need to determine what products you need to keep your customers satisfied for a streamlined order. Once the merchandise has been availed, the next stage the business should focus on is arranging the merchandise in terms of their specific categories. A proper assortment of the same will see to it that related items are placed in the same section or category. This improves customer access to the merchandise and saves time in the selection process. Some of the main categories include the food section, cosmetics, fashion, and clothing among other sections that can help simplify the selection process.
Conclusion
While retaining merchandising could seem simple from the above details, it is easily susceptible to a number of challenges. The different steps discussed above can however ease the process of managing your inventory provided you get all your details regarding your stock and sales right for proper projections. Any slight mistakes can easily affect the amount of stock you have, based on the projected demands.
