Assortment Planning
Cohesive assortments on the selling floor don’t come together by accident. To create the merchandise proposition that you are proud of and that your customers can connect with merchants all need to be selecting product with the same vision in mind
Assortment Planning can range from the number of required options by category down to fixture layouts by location. Whether you are just starting out or are looking to produce detailed plan-o-grams by fixture, Windham can help you translate your merchandise plan and open-to-buy to more specific templates for your merchants
The end result is a more cohesive assortment, a higher average ticket attributable to related sales, higher sell-through percentages and higher margins
Category Planning
For most businesses in the Consumer sector there are slices of the business that are not represented in the established merchandise hierarchy. Identifying these slices and planning properly will fine tune your merchandise plans and provide you with insight that may be missed by only planning your traditional merchandise classifications.
Windham has helped companies identify and focus on these important cross sections of their business. As these important cross sections or your business rise and fall with the cyclical nature of the consumer business, make sure your aggregate capital investment is in line with the current trends
Information Effectiveness
Leverage the substantial investment your company has made in technology to make decisions to that will grow your business and profits. Windham can help you design and deploy inexpensive strategies that will turn your data into the knowledge that will help you grow your business
Inventory Deployment
Inventory deployment is a critical function when managing the inventory asset, but often this function operates without a clear strategy and frequently with inadequate resources. Furthermore, very good micro decisions do not aggregate over a season to ownership by location that is positioned to clear dated inventory at the highest possible margin.
Windham has helped companies create and execute inventory deployment strategies that improve cash flow and maintained margin while reduce costs associated with excessive handling
Merchandise Planning
In today’s global economy lead times vary among vendors and even products within vendors. A merchandise planning process that doesn’t take into account the product development, manufacturing, and transit times of today’s environment will result in poorly invested capital.
Windham can help you develop an approach to merchandise planning that won’t leave your merchandising staff placing commitments while blind to the company’s expectations. Our approach encompasses traditional merchandise planning, developing assortment guidelines, and category cross check planning
Merchandise Strategy Development
A merchandising proposition that customers intuitively identify with starts with a well thought out strategy that has been easily and clearly communicated to the merchandising staff and store personnel. Only a clear and well communicated strategy will result in a cohesive merchandise presentation on the floor, and when it happens it is no accident.
A cohesive merchandise presentation that is positioned to capitalize on known customer preference while prospecting for future successes results in higher maintained margins and higher returns on the inventory capital. Windham can help your management develop, communicate a clear merchandise strategy.
Strategy Development
To maintain a competitive advantage, you need a strategy to make your business special, to create that “magic” that drives customers to your door and that keeps you ahead of the competition in a changing world.
Do you have a competitive advantage? What is it? How do you keep it? How do you capitalize on it?
Companies are in business today because they either have or had some “magic”. Often the “secret formula” is not passed from generation to generation of management.
Windham Advisors can help you identify your formula, determine if it’s still relevant, and build or modify it to meet the challenges of an ever-changing world.