Assortment planning is the process of selecting and allocating the right products, in the right sizes, colors, and quantities, to the right stores and channels, at the right time. It is a crucial activity for fashion retailers who want to optimize their inventory investments, meet customer demand, and increase sales and profitability.

What is Assortment Planning and Why is it Important?

Assortment planning is closely linked to merchandise planning, which sets the budget and strategy for each product category and season. However, assortment planning is more tactical and responsive to local market conditions and consumer preferences. It involves choosing the specific styles, attributes, and prices that will appeal to different customer segments and store clusters.

Assortment planning can be challenging, especially in a fast-changing and competitive fashion industry. Retailers need to balance customer expectations, product availability, inventory costs, and margin goals. They also need to consider factors such as seasonality, trends, promotions, and channel differences. To succeed in assortment planning, retailers need to have complete, accurate, and timely data, as well as advanced tools and processes that can help them make smart decisions.

How Oracle Retail Assortment Planning Can Help

Oracle Retail Assortment Planning is a cloud-based solution that helps fashion retailers plan their assortments with ease. It leverages artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to provide insights and recommendations based on historical sales data, customer segmentation, store clustering, profile science, attribute extraction, and more. It also integrates with other Oracle Retail solutions, such as Merchandise Financial Planning, Category Management, and Assortment and Space Optimization.

With Oracle Retail Assortment Planning, retailers can:

• Define and execute local market and microsite assortments that match customer demand
• Improve conversion of traffic into higher sales and margins
• Increase efficiency and collaboration among buying teams
• Simplify and optimize the assortment planning process with a highly visual workflow
• Anticipate in-season trends and adjust assortments accordingly
• Align assortments with merchandise plans and business objectives

How to Use Oracle Retail Assortment Planning

Oracle Retail Assortment Planning has a user-friendly interface that guides users through the following steps:

1. Review historical information, forecast targets, and merchandise financial plan targets
2. Set plan parameters, such as season start and end dates, store groups, product attributes, size profiles, etc.
3. Determine the number of options (styles) for each product category and subcategory
4. Define the assortment by selecting the options from the wholesale market or creating new ones
5. Plan the buy quantity for each option based on expected sales, inventory levels, replenishment rules, etc.
6. Review the assortment goals, such as sales, margin, sell-through rate, etc., and compare them with the plan targets
7. Approve the assortment or make adjustments as needed