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Dear Colleagues, When it comes to planning the buy for the entire6 month season, the same dilemma rises again and again: whether I should go for a wider range of apparel, getting few dozens of this style and that (even though I might not be excited about good half of the styles, this way I'll have a variety of options to display at a time), or rather to invest in a plain basic t-shirt buying it in depth and hence offering very limited number of options to the customer. In another words, for the same money I can get hundred of options for a season or double and even triple of that. So how do you plan your number of options? How do you come up with that magic number which is good enough to last for a season (enable you to refresh your store displaying new lines weekly or at least monthly) and bring you money (which means your best-sellers have to be bought in bulk) while not making your store look monotonous, too?
Hi Yaroslava ,
I am working in the fashion retail for almoast 12 years now. It depends of the kind of the store that you wanna have ! There are store that sell ,,one time model,, and other store that they have the same model but changing the colors and the print on the t-shirts! Now depend of the public that you wanna have. If you want to make it a select store or a store for all pckets.Firs of all you have to have a supplier from where to buy the t-shirts, or you can work with an smal designer who can make you the design and you can print them on the t-shirts. For example s firend of mine opened a store and she has finish art school, but she is doing her own design. My oppinion is for you to have a good plan that can cover a year. Thing about the season...the seasons are changing every 3 month's...so for every season you have to have a diffrent collection, color, print, model....becasue the consumers are always searching for something new and the first spot where they are looking is you shop window where you have the manequins! So if you have in the window every week a new color/product the costumers are tempted to come inside and look at it.I hope that this message will help you, and if you have any other questions, pls ask ! Have a greate day,
Marius PopStore Manager Zara Berlin
You need first to decide the vision of your store in the future, for example
Do you see it as a store that specializes in certain products and serve in a relatively large geographical area or,
Do you see it as a store that is more into everything to everyone,
I'm not sure, don't have much expertise in fashion stores, the idea is to determine the vision itself, how and where do you see your store in 5-10 years?, then choose the alternative that doesn't cause you losses and in the same time serves your long-term goal and helps you reach the vision you have.
what i suggest is never go for6 months buying at once, While planning your buying you should have your trading and marketing calendar in front of you. Divide season phases first by month. Example if you buying for High summer you should plan it in april,may and june by month. Look at your last year sales first in the same period by category. Check it by department,by category, by class and by sub class. that will give you a clear picture what you sold last summer. Prepare then your Sales curves and split your OTB based on categories as i said above. but dont go over the budget or too much for a single category as you will have then to plan your summer sale which probably will start in first week of august for arabian penninsula, and this will be then the period to clear most of your stock and then start planning for your AW stock. I hope you will be satisfied with what i said.
