FFA 3: Fresh Fashion

A e AR s OCU f .03

Fresh Fashion and availability

A loyal customer visits a Lifestyle store 6-7 times a year but stock turnover was happening 3 times at best. The customer ended up seeing the same merchandize multiple times, triggering fatigue. Along with this, the related matter of availability of desired stock or sizes was another issue. These related issues were to be addressed through FFA 3.

the CORe promise at Lifestyle is not only to provide great services, but also to offer customers freshness, variety and availability of what they are looking for. In short, Lifestyle is about fashion needs and indulgence. Freshness is key to fulfil this need. Customers do not always walk into the store seeking discounts.

Case For ChanGe

1.1 turnover of fresh fashion

While stock replenishments happened every 3 months, the sell-through happened only in 5 months. This was primarily because of the fatigue factor of the same goods being on shelves for long, and the customer not being engaged with fresh fashion. A worrying natural fall-out was that the business became highly dependent on EOSS.

On the other hand, at this time, fast-fashion brands such as Zara and H&M were delivering between 6-10 stock-turns a year, attracting most customers. Being on trend is afterall the core of business of fashion.

1.2 Category freshness

The lack of availability of product variety within a category too meant the loss of potential sales. Customers looking for a product type rarely opt to purchase an unrelated item, despite a greater choice in the other category. For instance, if a customer is set on picking up T-shirts for summer, he or she is unlikely to be persuaded to pick up shorts and dresses.

1.3 Size availability

Required sizes of merchandize on display may not be available at the store or warehouse – creating customer disgruntlement.

1.4 Pressure at EOSS

Since turnover of fresh fashion was slow, most customers would wait for EOSS to get at the merchandize at a lower cost. Typically, a regular customer understood that the products they had earmarked would be available a couple of months later and at a cheaper price so they avoided purchasing pre EOSS. This in turn, put high pressure on EOSS to achieve a high sellthrough - and at lowered costs.

PLAN AND IMPLEMENTATION

Only goods on shelves for less than

60 days were deemed ‘fresh’: The plan was to keep the category approach and seasonality in focus while sourcing, purchasing, merchandising and creating the planogram. And during season, new options needed to be provided for every category drop.

All functions were aligned: A calendar encompassing all stores was created to align merchandising, retail, purchasing, VM display, colour palettes and promotions for a 60-day periodicity.

fresh fashion every week: Store windows and display clusters were refreshed weekly and communicated through marketing channels. Fortnightly planograms ensured the process was followed. Periodical liquidation of slow-sellers on an ongoing basis too was introduced.

size availability ensured: This was achieved by shifting products from low-

The category-first approach serviced customers optimally

footfall to high-footfall stores to ensure unbroken size sets. This particular function was earlier controlled from Bangalore but under the FFA approach, four regional controllers were set up, allowing for more flexibility and faster decision-making.

early season launch: The season launch was advanced by a month to improve the pre EOSS sell-through and to reduce the sellthrough burden during EOSS.

Category-first approach: To address the problem of lack of freshness and variety in categories, the stocking of merchandize was decided first by category demands. The brands to be featured in stores were decided by their stock of the categories in demand in the particular store.

‘Category-first’ and external brands: All stakeholders too were brought under the purview of the store/category/brand review to ensure that customers seeking fresh fashion and variety in category were not disappointed. Way-ahead strategies for nonperforming brands in this matrix were altered where required. software to facilitate the process: This included Kanvas, a visual analytics software, that helped the planning, buying and frontend retail teams to collate, analyse and collaborate effortlessly; and a platform tool, BOARD, to build the basis data of planning and merchandising functions.

Changes in the team structure: Earlier the Planning and Merchandising teams were clubbed and operated centrally. To ensure agility in decision-making on store floors, Merchandising was attached with regional teams. The teams were to focus on allocation of merchandize as per store matrix, periodical consolidation of merchandize and so on. The Planning department was to focus on upcoming seasons with supportive analysis for decision-making, increasing private label share and so on.

system to ensure higher sell-through pre-

eOss: The target was to achieve 60-65% pre EOSS sell-through. Weekly analysis grouped options under ‘good’, ‘average’ and ‘poor’ – basis the sell-through achievement. The ‘average’ and ‘poor’ options were put out on periodical discount in season prior to EOSS.