Case Study: Simply Fashions Assortment Planning

By Epicor Software Corporation

Retail planning is no longer a pre-season exercise focused exclusively on a company-wide financial plan. Today's markets are volatile, with shorter seasons, faster fashion cycles, and ever-shifting trends. As a result, planning has become a highly involved, ongoing process that requires the integration of numerous plans, analyses at all levels, and the synchronization of multiple channels to accurately predict and respond to trends.

This was the challenge faced by women's apparel retailer Simply Fashion. As they grew into a 300-store chain, so too did they outgrow their capacity to effectively plan on spreadsheets. They needed an automated, integrated planning solution that could handle more variables, analyze data richly, and process information enterprise-wide.

To meet this challenge, Simply Fashion chose Epicor Retail Planning and Epicor Retail Merchandising, to complement a variety of other Epicor solutions. Read this case study to learn how Simply Fashion is using these solutions to:

• Consistently order and place the right merchandise in the right stores at the right times, to maximize profitability
• Keep product offerings in step with customers' changing needs
• Efficiently analyze a wealth of critical information
• Determine and manage merchandise according to store profiles
• Create assortment plans in sync with store sub-class numbers
• Simply assortment planning with visual tools, linked to financials