Inventory

Retailers collect a massive amount of data every day. That data gets turned into reports, which are distributed throughout different branches of the company, including store associates. However, do those store associates know what to do with all the reports sent to them? Most of the time the answer is “no.” In the session “Prescriptive…

With Black Friday in two days, the holiday season fast approaching and e-commerce exploding around the globe, opportunities for small-to-medium businesses (SMBs) in the retail industry are skyrocketing — and the rules of the game are changing. Cloud-based e-commerce and enterprise resource planning (ERP) applications are lowering the barrier to entry, while mobile technology is…

Consumers have options, and they know it. Brands need an intelligent order management system to fulfill orders profitably.

As the U.S. presidential election comes to an end, consumers are turning their attention to the rapidly approaching holiday shopping season. Typically, Americans tend to start preparations well before the December rush, and even before the traditional Thanksgiving week start to the season. According to The NPD Group’s Holiday Purchase Intentions Survey, in 2015, “half of…

As I go through the discovery process with prospective SPI customers, there's a moment in almost every engagement when one of the planners or allocators shows their current multitab, multidimension, multipivot table, holographic (OK, I exaggerated on the last point) homegrown Excel spreadsheet. It always impresses. I'm genuinely in awe of the complex usage of…

It's estimated that the Chicago Cubs World Series appearance will break retail records. The Cubs haven’t played in a World Series since 1945, or won one since 1908. That's the longest championship drought in baseball, and there are plenty of loyal Cub fans ready to scoop up World Series merchandise as a result. Forbes reports…

With the back-to-school (BTS) shopping season over and retailers shifting their attention to the all-important holiday selling season, it begs the question: What can retailers do after the BTS cycle is over to set up stores for a successful end-of-year push? Priority No. 1 for all retailers is to move BTS inventory out of the…

Anda Pho, head of marketing at True&Co., the lingerie retailer that uses an online fit quiz to size bras for women of all shapes and sizes, explained yesterday at NEMOA’s directXchange 2016 Fall Conference how the company has revolutionized the bra-buying process. Data is Everything “Making a bra is like making a car,” Pho said. There…

Exactly what a “size six” is can be a mystery to your customers. Sizes are defined differently from manufacturer to manufacturer, and even from year to year. Some designers may change sizes for strategic reasons. For example, a decade ago a garment would have been labeled a size 16, but it’s a size 12 today in…

Welcome to the first video in our new Retail Video Spotlight Series. The first series is all about concept stores. Today, we're talking to Rachel Shechtman, founder of STORY, a retail store in New York City that takes the viewpoint of a magazine, changes like a gallery, and sells product like your standard brick-and-mortar store. Hear…