Advisory Built for the Real Rhythm of Retail.

Retail Performance Advisory

This is the flagship advisory relationship -- the monthly recurring engagement that ties everything together.

Beyond the numbers, you need an advisor who understands the full picture of retail operations. Someone who has been in the stores, worked with the buyers, managed the floor, and seen what separates retailers who grow from retailers who just stay busy.

We provide guidance on forecasting, margin improvement, markdown strategy, cash flow planning, seasonal preparation, and operational priorities. We develop a customized action plan for your particular needs, which may include merchandising, marketing, promotions, sales training, and organizing buyer groups to help you sell your products.

Through the Winning at Business process, we look at the retailer's two greatest assets: Inventory and People. We work with clients to strategically implement day-to-day successful business practices that help in all aspects of the business.

Every class is reviewed twice every month before being reviewed with our clients. The initial markup is analyzed by classification to be sure your store is competitive. We review markdowns to make sure your store is aggressive enough. We calculate and discuss the maintained markup (gross profit) to be sure you are profitable in every classification, over and above what it takes to run the business.

Open-to-Buy Planning

Every smart buying decision starts with knowing how much you can spend. That sounds obvious, but the majority of independent retailers buy based on gut feel, vendor pressure, or last year's numbers and hope it works out. It usually does not.

Open-to-Buy (OTB) is the planning discipline that changes this. We build and maintain a monthly OTB plan tied to your actual sales history, current inventory position, and forward-looking targets. Every classification in your store gets its own plan. Every number ties back to your real cash flow.

The result: you know exactly how much to buy, when to buy it, and in which categories. You stop overbuying in slow classifications and underbuying in strong ones. You reduce markdown pressure because you are not stuck with inventory that should never have been purchased.

Our forecasts predict sales in each classification with greater than 90% accuracy most months. We forecast sales, inventories, and markdowns 10 months in advance. We do not tell you what to buy -- we tell you how much to buy, based on your customers' actual purchasing trends.

Inventory and Class Analysis

Think of the retail business as having two parts: Merchandising and Operations. On the merchandising side, the critical metrics are markup, markdown, maintained margin, turnover, stock-to-sales ratio, and GMROI. Most retailers track some of these numbers. Very few use them to make better decisions at the classification level.

We break your store into separate inventory classifications and analyze each one as its own profit center. We look at sell-through rates, aging, stock-to-sales ratios, and margin contribution by class. We identify which classifications are performing, which are stagnant, and where your assortment is out of balance.

This is the foundation of better buying decisions. When you can see that Class A is turning 4 times a year with strong margins while Class B is turning 1.5 times with heavy markdowns, the path forward becomes clear. You put cash into what works and stop funding what does not.

We make sure you are putting your cash into classifications that can help maximize opportunities within the business and not putting cash into something you cannot profitably sell.