Home Décor Retailer Innovates its Merchandise Planning Process to Drive Growth​

The client is a big box home décor retailer featuring broad product categories including furniture, home textiles, garden, housewares, accessories, and rugs, as well as seasonal décor. The retailer was challenged with limited visibility of merchandising financials and a lack of clarity in understanding if merchandise commitments would effectively support the planned level of business. These issues resulted from product development and commitments made before financial plans and leadership alignment.​

Further, the in-season business review process primarily looked at historical performance, gave inadequate visibility into financial measurements, and did not provide insights into projected key measures, such as forecasted inventory levels or gross margin.

Parker Avery partnered with the client in designing innovative merchandise planning processes and implementing a new planning calendar and report structure that would support the business requirements and objectives.

Parker Avery’s overall solution combined the new merchandise planning process, timeline, and reports with redesigned roles and responsibilities to enable an immediate win for the company through better merchandise planning capabilities.

Key activities included:​

• Design of future-state pre-season and in-season merchandise planning processes
• Development and design of standard reporting to support the retailer’s planning process and create plan transparency across the organization​
• Organizational change leadership, including the development of a training plan and communication strategy​
• Development of merchandise planning training materials and training delivery​
• Overall project management to deliver within the client’s specified budget and timeline​