Pairing insights and process for improved results
How Omnilytics supports current retail processes and integrates with your existing ERP or POS system.
How Omnilytics supports current retail processes and integrates with your existing ERP or POS system.
Review post-season performance
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Articulate research into assortment strategy
Designing & sampling
Build assortment mix & quantity within OTB
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Product allocation & distribution
Create item code & upload the price in the internal system
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Prepare new product information or lookbooks for channels
Plan and execute new product launch
Monitor trade & reporting
Activate seasonal sale
Execute tactical promotions
Optimise assortment, pricing & replenishment
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Behind every successful business lays a strong foundation of market research. This is a key step which is often deprioritized by businesses, not knowing the value it possess to the business growth in the long term. Market research and competitor analysis is the action of gathering, analysing and interpreting external market data to help businesses make wise decisions.
The adoption of Omnilytics dashboard helps brands in conducting a thorough market analysis and competitor research incorporating both internal and external data. The forward strategy could be formulated effectively to develop commercial decision making.
Distribution channel is one of the vital components of a business market strategy. It is a path by which all goods and services go through to reach the end consumers. With that being said, determining the right distribution channels is crucial in getting a product to the right target market, at the right time to maximise sales potentiality, profitability and business efficiency. This is particularly crucial for a new brand.
Other than constantly reviewing internal distribution channels presence and performance, it is also crucial to be sensitive towards external market changes, should there be a horizon of new distribution channels to help expand business opportunities.
Open to buy (“OTB”) is the buying budget for a specific period. It is important to monitor OTB to reduce instances of over or underbuying which can result in excess inventories and loss of sales. You may refer to the Omnilytics Fashion Academy here for a more detailed understanding of OTB.
Learn how to use Omnilytics fashion retail data platform to analyse and take action to optimise OTB in this article.
A successful retailer drives promising sales conversion with the right assortment offerings to its target market. Assortment planning plays a critical role in retail strategy planning, focusing on one of the marketing mix, Product element.
Identifying the right assortment mix simply means understanding your target market well, in terms of their buying behavior and preferences. A thorough understanding of the target market behavior lays a strong foundation to formulate assortment planning strategies to achieve desired sales conversion.
Multiple factors contribute to a well-thought assortment strategy for the business, and this could be supplemented by using both internal and external data insights such as understanding own brand product offerings and performance, competitor offerings, customer behavior etc.
One of the ways in monitoring your competitors is to review their assortment mix strategy. Periodic and timely review of your assortment mix strategy against the market is important to uncover demand opportunities and to ensure you are producing the right products for the right customers.
Learn how to review your competitors’ assortment mix strategy by following a few simple steps using the Omnilytics dashboard.
Online retailing has grown significantly whilst traditional brick-and-mortar business has seen a marked decline in growth. This shift in the retail scene has put further pressure on retailers’ to get their pricing strategies right.
Creating a pricing strategy for your business is essential, but it certainly not easy to implement. Retailers are required to decide should you want higher prices for your products and lower products sold or lower prices than competitors and a higher volume sold. It all depends on your business model where profitability is the key end goal to achieve. Having this in mind, below are some recommended steps you can take to develop a pricing strategy best suited to your business.
The Omnilytics Calendar module allows you to monitor the launch and markdown dates of other retailers and brands which are key information needed when planning your own product launches and markdown. It is an important step to take when crafting your own launch strategies to ensure market alignment and ultimately, sales optimization.
In this article, you will learn how to review your competitors’ launch strategy by using the Omnilytics Calendar module. Using this module, you can monitor your competitors’ launch and markdown activities on a daily, weekly or monthly basis in the period of 12 months either by rolling or the current year.
Bringing the final product sketches into production is often the most exciting yet challenging part for retail businesses. As highlighted in the Omnilytics Fashion Academy, “The supply chain is one of the most critical aspects of running a business and how you manage it will greatly impact your profits.”
Factory negotiations are one of the aspects where small and medium-sized retailers are often overlooked and under-prepared. Supply chain management covers a wide scope from order fulfilment, logistics to inventory storage. Understanding what your production goals are for your product line helps to provide clarity and direction in obtaining the best possible outcome and mitigate potential risks associated with the production process.
If you are looking for the right distribution channel to venture into, the Omnilytics Competitor Benchmarking module can help you to assess the performance of different distribution channels in the market. Learn how to identify online distribution channels with a strong performance with these simple steps.
Step 1: Identify available distribution channel for your brand
Assuming you are a brand that sells denim jeans, start by filtering for popular denim brands in the market to identify where they are most stocked. In this example, we have selected Levi’s, J Brand and Calvin Klein Jeans. We can observe that Yoox, Farfetch, Selfridges & Co., The Outnet & House of Fraser are the top channels that carry these popular denim brands.
The Omnilytics Calendar module allows you to monitor the launch dates of other brands/retailers. Learn how to determine the optimum launch dates for your brand by following these few steps.
Step 1: Analyse the timing of the launches of other brands/retailers
Focus on the frequency of launches by brands or retailers and determine the amount of products dropped in every launch. For instance, Zara Singapore has a distinctive launch & and discounting strategy where they consistently launch products every month with 2 seasonal sales (June and December) in a year.
Sales is the main pillar in the brand and retailer. Without sales, it is almost impossible for a business to run. All retailers are looking for ways to improve their sales performance, both new retailers and those that already have regular customers. How to? One of the ways is by doing regular trade monitoring and reporting.
Trade monitoring and reporting refers to the assessment of brand/retailer’s strategies that have been done and identify the results and key learnings. This includes analysing sales performance and managing a healthy inventory rate. In simpler terms, it’s similar to conducting a post-mortem meeting – to identify lessons learnt and where to improve next.
Stock replenishment is a standard retail process that consists of putting more stocks in order to fulfill the customers demand. Stock replenishment ensures that the right products are in the best place, at the optimum quantity.
Replenishment step is closely tied up with the previous step of conducting performance review. Once you’ve completed WSSI (Weekly Sales, Stock and Intake), you can then decide if you need to replenish some SKUs. Replenishments are best done while the products are still highly sought-after. It’s a missed opportunity if you don’t replenish those items, especially in today’s competitive market. Retailers can also automate replenishment using intelligent algorithms/software, which can be particularly beneficial especially during promotional or seasonal events.
All brands and retailers ideally want to have all their products sold at full price while also maintaining high sell-through rates. However, promotions are sometimes inevitable as a tool to push the slow movers and maintain a healthy inventory level.
Prior to doing promotions, brands and retailers need to plan strategically. Because having sporadic offers and discounting products at a ridiculously low price without analysis, will not only damage the profitability of your business, but can also jeopardize your brand image.
The first step to do is to analyse each of your products’ sell-through rate to identify which item requires promotions in order to drive the sales. However, once obtained, the sell-through rate alone is not sufficient to determine which products to promote. Another point to consider is the launching date or the age of the products. Once product lists are identified, consider what strategy you want to apply.
After brands and retailers have done promotions, sometimes there are still remaining stocks or inventory to clear out. Typically the next stage after promotion would be a markdown.
Markdown refers to a more straightforward discount given for particular products, can be a seasonal or clearance. Seasonal sale usually will be staggered to a deeper discount percentage by the time. But sometimes extreme slow-movers can also be added directly into a sale or clearance event, without having to go through the first phase of promotions.
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