{"id":2543,"date":"2019-10-03T18:35:43","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T13:05:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intelligencenode.com\/blog\/?p=2543"},"modified":"2026-04-24T17:35:20","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T12:05:20","slug":"assortment-planning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intelligencenode.com\/blog\/assortment-planning\/","title":{"rendered":"Assortment Planning – The Holy Grail of Merchandising"},"content":{"rendered":"

With retail transitioning into a consumer-driven business faster than ever, issues like determining the best product mix and inventory size are of strategic importance to a retailer looking to cash in at the eCommerce platforms. Assortment planning perhaps plays an even bigger role today than ever with ever-shortening lead times,\u00a0personalizations,<\/span> and year-round discounts.<\/p>\n

Which begs the question:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

How do retailers of today decide the right mix for their stores?<\/b><\/h2>\n

Do they turn to historical sales data? Maybe go with what the customers expect? Play to brand\u2019s identity and hope it\u2019s enough?<\/p>\n

If they stock too much variety, they may lack focus and create confusion among their customers. Not being clear on the store\u2019s identity can alienate customers and negatively impact repeat sales.\u00a0If the product mix is too narrow, there is always a looming risk of losing customers to large players that cater to many tastes and preferences.<\/span><\/p>\n

Often, hitting the sweet spot for a brand gets tricky. Figuring out what products to sell and which to leave out of the assortment requires some fine tuning. While there has been significant improvement in the assortment planning with a customer-centric approach in the age of social media marketing and instant feedbacks, retailers are still fighting to make headway when it comes to merchandise planning- a set of interlinked decisions made months ahead of the collection\u2019s preview.<\/p>\n

Key factors to consider when developing an assortment plan<\/h2>\n

With a product-centric approach deeply engraved in their nature, retailers are understandably having difficulty hitting the jackpot when it comes to assortment planning. The answer lies in key factors like brand identity, category weight, market trends, and price range. Each provides a clue to the mystery, coupled with tangible information from the marketing department (number of products per order, response rates, etc).<\/p>\n

Since there is no crystal ball in retail (except as a product, maybe), how can brands and retailers know what products customers will want? There are too many data points to consider from different channels and geographies during assortment planning process. Merchandisers are constantly inundated with strategic choices on assortments. Fashion retails teams need to ride the latest trends without making risky maneuvers that affect the bottom line in the assortment planning process. Stuck between appeasing to consumers and improving their sales, playing it safe with the mainstays, sticking to the tried-and-true formulae sounds tempting too.<\/span> Or, they can risk by pushing potential future winners. We\u2019ll paint you a picture with two seemingly different examples of assortment planning.<\/p>\n

# Tip 1 : The right balance between trends and staples.<\/h2>\n

Topshop, the fast fashion brand, assortment has a fairly odd combination of totes. There are:<\/p>\n