Think like a buyer - Math Merchandise

What does an apparel buyer do?

Selects the merchandise

Forecasting customer demand

Working with suppliers - negotiating cost

Monitoring sales preformance

Planning future purchases

Whats products are actually selling?

Which stores are preforming the best? (are we making money)

When should this style be reordered? (Do we have the right amount of inventory)

When is the right time to reduce prices? (How do we improve for next year)

Tools buyers use to decide what would be

on the shelves

at what prices in what quantity

and in what store

Past sales performance

Inventory levels

Store location and demographics

Customer demands and trends

When asked how did you preform you want to look at

Sales

Revenue

How much we made

How many pairs of x sold

Buyers sales dashboard

Gross sales - everything the register rang up, what did the customers pay

Net sales - what we kept, gross sales minus returns and discounts

Units sold - total amount of pieces that left the store

Price signal - average unit retail, average price a customer paid per item

Gross sales

Sum of every sales transaction at the register

Ie your denim dept rings up 18450 on saturday, nothing has been subtracted

Net sales formula

Gross sales - returns - discounts

Money actually generated

The buyers working number

Fewer expensive pieces vs many affordable pieces

1. Inventory risk - leather jacket holds up 300 dollars

2. Customer positioning - who is the customer paying for each department

3. Store operations - which department has more amentities? tagging, hanging, dressing rooms

4. Reorder behavior - which dept can restock in week or 12 weeks

AUR, Average until retail

Average price the customer paid per piece of merch

Net sales/units sold = AUR

High AUR vs low

High -

full prices

Views as place of quality

Markdowns are limited and strategic

Low -

Accessible

Customer is buying multiples

Promos are sneaky

Sign of health formula

Returns + discounts / gross sales * 100