CHAPTER THREE

Product Life Cycle Planning

How to Reinvent Forecasting, Inventory Optimization, and Markdown Pricing

If you’re a retailer, you’re being hurt by your inventory. All retailers, at one time or another, end up carrying too much or too little. Too much, of course, leads to end-of-season surpluses that must be cleared with margin-killing markdowns. Too little causes stockouts and missed sales. That frustrates customers and can prompt them to shop elsewhere, sometimes forever.

How do you walk the tightrope between margin lost and sales forgone? The key lies in managing three ingredients that, together, enable product availability: an accurate forecast, a flexible supply chain, and, of course, an appropriate supply of inventory.

Any ...

Get The New Science of Retailing now with the O’Reilly learning platform.

O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.