Mastering Line and Assortment Planning: Addressing Struggles in a Merchandiser’s Journey
In the fast-paced fashion industry, brands that stay ahead of the latest market trends succeed in outwitting their competition. Preparing for each season requires meticulous planning and detailing.
Laura, a seasoned merchandiser at a North American women’s clothing company, was gearing up for a big meeting with a top online retailer to discuss the line plan for Fall 2024.
The retailer, a crucial client, drives significant sales for her company.
Given the stiff competition in the women’s apparel segment, Laura had to impress the client team and secure their agreement to launch the Fall 2024 collection.
Caught Off Guard in a Client Meeting
Ahead of the pivotal meeting with the client, Laura spent days trying to put together a complete initial line plan.
However, the line planning was no easy task.
Getting easy access to detailed previous season data was stressful and time-consuming.
Laura had to rely on manual processes, juggling PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets, Dropbox files, and printed reports spread across different departments. Even before she realized it, days had turned into weeks!
Thankfully, her design team had done some amazing work on new styles and products, and she was excited to present these latest launches.
Since her line & assortment plan was far from perfect, Laura decided to create a report focused on the company’s performance on the client’s website, enlisting the best-selling styles and highly rated products.
Laura entered the conference room exuding confidence, armed with a detailed report on the latest season, all set to impress the client team. The stakes were high, knowing the client’s crucial role in launching & marketing the new collection.
As Laura began her presentation, she realized that conveying the depth & uniqueness of their new launches with mere slides was impossible.
The client team requested to see physical samples, especially for the new styles, before proceeding further.
Agreeing to deliver these samples within the next two weeks, Laura shifted gears to discuss the previous season's performance.
Despite having basic data at hand, Laura faced an unexpected question from a member of the client team.
What were the best-selling party dresses on our website in the West?
Laura had no answer!
Crunched & pressed for time, she never had the chance to analyze & delve deep into the scattered data before the meeting. She didn’t get a chance to slice and diced it to obtain the granular details.
She wondered how cool it would be if she had the information readily available, without all the manual effort!
Sadly, her competitors might capitalize on these delays, launching their products quicker. The thought that her company might be falling behind, while others were already leveraging such capabilities, nagged Laura.
From Stress to Success: Laura's Journey with Visulon
Laura’s immediate priority was coordinating with the design and production teams to prepare the samples, which took multiple meetings, endless calls, and Zoom sessions.
Time and again, she kept wondering - What if I could just show 3D samples of the products?
Moving the supply chain while digging through Excel sheets, presentations, and printed reports to gather granular data seemed to be an uphill battle!
However, the next meeting with the clients was going to be her moment of truth. There was no room for error, every delay could mean losing ground to competitors!
Over the weekend, Laura attended an industry conference and met her old college Julia, now a top merchandiser for an athleisure brand. Laura couldn't help but share her stress about the upcoming season.
Julia recommended Visulon - An AI-powered Visual Line Planning & Merchandising Platform, which her company had implemented recently.
Transforming Merchandising Strategies: Laura Learns About Visulon
As Julia explained how Visulon had streamlined her work, Laura saw a ray of hope.
Laura swiftly sought out a demo from Visulon, eager to explore its extensive capabilities.
The Visulon team walked her through a wide range of features, including -
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Fast Access to critical data from previous seasons: Enterprise-class data integration from various sources like Excel sheets, PPTs, and printed reports. Unified data from ERP, CRM, and PLM systems.
With integrated data, Laura could get region-wise data for the party dresses or any segment, at her fingertips, in a few clicks!
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Visual Assortment Planning Solution: 3D imaging capabilities, eliminating the need for sample runs through complex supply chain effort and overhead. Laura could create visual line plans using 3D product images with Visulon, enhancing design and customer presentation processes.
Not to miss, the company could have saved significant money that otherwise goes into producing samples.
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Agile Decision Making with a comprehensive suite of features: Streamlining the entire line planning with Visulon’s comprehensive capabilities would allow Laura to get work done in days instead of weeks. With features like colorway selection, an assortment module for product picking/dropping, and predefined templates, Laura can focus on customer and internal team meetings without the hassle of manual data gathering.
More importantly, this would help merchandizers like Laura gain a competitive edge for their companies.
Excited by Visulon's potential, Laura proposes its implementation at the next executive meeting, aiming to revolutionize their approach to line and assortment planning and eliminate future struggles.
Revolutionize Your Merchandising with Visulon: Reduce Time to Market by up to 50%
Are you still going through manual line planning processes like Laura?
Visulon’s AI-powered Visual Line Planning & Merchandising platform can revolutionize the way you approach each season's product assortments.
By eliminating tedious manual processes and fostering seamless collaboration between teams, Visulon empowers you to expedite approvals from executives and customers and bring agility to the decision-making process, ensuring you always stay ahead of the competitors!
Experience the power of Visulon’s AI-powered Visual Line Planning & Merchandising platform and speed up design-to-market processes for product assortments by up to 50%!