Category: Smart Merchandising

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Smart Merchandising Warehouse Management

What is Retail Inventory Management, and How to Master it?

As a brand owner, do you often find the merchandise your customers are searching for is either out of stock or misplaced? Systematic inventory management ensures a smooth customer experience and a coordinated flow of stock across the supply chain to avoid errors like inaccurate order picking, delayed order fulfillment, missed shipments, etc. 

COVID-19 highlighted loopholes in the legacy solutions and the lack of agility and flexibility in supply chains. Fulfilling the increasing demand for omnichannel commerce requires new-age inventory management solutions that help in:

  • Optimizing storage space
  • Preventing the accumulation of deadstock
  • Fulfilling orders accurately and on time
  • Avoiding spoilage of perishable consumable items
  • Increasing sales by enhancing customer experience.

4 Efficient Inventory Management Techniques

  1. JIT (Just-in-time) Inventory Management

The process of procuring raw materials from suppliers, as soon as an order is placed and managing on-time production schedules is called the JIT method. It prevents overstocking or deadstock and is an excellent way of eliminating high inventory costs. 

Increff Iris, is enabling one of the leading eyewear brands to fulfill both JIT and OTC (over-the-counter) merchandise simultaneously in an automated fashion. 

  1. ABC Analysis Technique

ABC Analysis is a way of categorizing goods based on their value and the company’s profit.

For example, marketplaces like Amazon categorizes item listings on their portal based on this technique:

  • Category A: Most valuable items that offer the highest profit and exceed target margins are listed first.
  • Category B: The wide range of goods that fall in between categories A and C.
  • Category C:  Items that make profits to meet targets but don’t make much difference individually.

This helps marketplaces maximize profits by understanding which items to prioritize on their portal. 

Increff Assure, our efficient WMS and order fulfillment solution has reports that can help brands analyze sales across all B2B and B2C channels and improve delivery efficiency. Inventory serialization helps to track individual pieces accurately. It improves picking accuracy and facilitates faster order fulfillment which helps brands gain a higher customer satisfaction score and greater visibility on marketplaces. 

  1. FEFO for limited shelf-life products

FEFO is a stock rotation technique to prevent stock loss due to expiration or obsolescence. Assigning expiry dates to batches, allow brands to track each batch accurately so retailers know when to push which stock from the warehouse to the store. It is used in industries like e.g. beauty, pharma, and consumable goods dealing with limited shelf-life products for inventory optimization and minimizing waste.

The new Expiry feature in Assure allows brands to set quality benchmarks at the batch level by triggering notifications when a batch is going to expire. It enables retailers to channelize sales to various points of sales accordingly, and ensure a majority of the stock is sold within the desired timeframe.

  1. EOQ Technique 

The EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) technique considers factors like customer demand, ordering cost, and holding cost to calculate the proper levels of inventory. Customer demand is based on factors like trends, seasons, and internal factors like marketing strategies, offers, etc. Ordering costs are usually stable and decrease if you order the inventory in bulk. Holding/carrying costs generally depend on the amount of inventory in hand. This allows brands to stock optimal quantities at minimal costs while ensuring a smooth flow of business. 

Increff Iris’s smart assortment planning capability involves tracking and measuring individual style performance, at the granular level, to define the ideal store-wise assortment plan that caters to the local customer demands. It helps prevent loss in sales opportunities and increases inventory turnover by identifying NOOS styles and highlighting non-moving dead styles to improve overall inventory health

Now is the time for omnichannel retailers to gear up and adapt to efficient inventory management techniques to increase agility in their supply chain and improve inventory accuracy. It presents a huge opportunity for them to offer their best merchandise across all sales channels, at a competitive price and clear their stuck inventory making room for new launches. 

Learn more about Increff Iris and Increff Assure. 

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Business Smart Merchandising Technology

How Dynamic Pricing Strategy Can Help Retailers

As consumers started shopping online and omnichannel, price is playing an important role. The Internet gives consumers the ability to compare prices instantly. A slight change increase or decrease can mean a customer lost or gained. Hence, the concept of dynamic pricing is quickly gaining attention. 

What is dynamic pricing? 

Dynamic pricing is a compelling strategy that can help retailers run their business profitably while keeping up with the competition across channels. To put it in simple words, dynamic pricing is changing the discounts, or markdowns, on the price of products based on their KPIs. It is also called demand pricing, dynamic markdown, time-based pricing, or surge pricing based on its application in different markets.

One of the most common examples of this pricing strategy is the end-of-season sales. While off-season merchandise is sold at discounted prices, goods that are not affected by changing styles or weather can be sold at a constant price or minimal discounts. 

Dynamic pricing strategy automates price adjustments based on data-driven algorithms fuelled by personalized information provided by each retailer. Factors like demand changes, inventory, and competitive data are also considered. To be successful, dynamic pricing needs to combine the age-old wisdom of the retailer with machine learning and adaptable software. 

How does it help retailers? 

Though the first advantage that may come to mind is increasing profit margins, there are many benefits of implementing dynamic pricing. 

  1. Create demand to keep the stock health and age in check

A rightly priced SKU, at the right time, can help boost sales. This helps in keeping in the freshness of stock and the availability of sizes/variants of a product. Products that are either discontinued, near expiry, or meant to last only for a specific period, need to revise selling price as per their planned lifecycle. If a retailer is handling this manually across categories and points of sales, it can become near impossible to track and monitor. With the right dynamic markdown algorithm, prices can be tweaked to control the sales of a product. 

  1. Understand your customers 

Collecting data is a key part of implementing automated dynamic pricing. This lets retailers gain insights into the consumer’s behaviour, patterns, and preferences. It can translate to more actionable data which can feed your algorithms to perform better, leading to an efficient pricing strategy. 

  1. Make informed decisions

Implementing dynamic pricing allows brands to access real-time pricing and demand trends. This can help make informed decisions on the price change of a particular product or category. Knowing the competition’s price trends ensures products are priced just right which aids in increasing sales and profitability. 

  1. Reflecting demand 

The digitally savvy consumer is often aware of changes in price as the demand for a product changes. Many a time, they are also willing to pay a premium to get exclusive access to a product. Similarly, it is known to them the prices of seasonal goods will change as the weather changes. Dynamic pricing lets you reflect the demand of a product at its price without compromising on the brand image. 

  1. Increase revenue and profits with a healthier working capital

One of the most significant outcomes of using dynamic pricing software is to take into consideration demand and supply, competitor strategies, and price fluctuation in the market. All of this data is crunched in real-time to deliver an optimum price for staying profitable. Dynamic pricing can be used to lower prices to increase sales, meet sales targets and avoid the accumulation of deadstock, thereby freeing up choked cash for the retailer. 
Try Increff Dynamic Markdown tool to gain deep insights on simple targeted solutions, to complex pricing problems without compromising on your brand value. Its smart algorithm recommends ideal markdowns along with the restocking strategy to ensure profitability and higher revenues, in the fastest time. Learn more about the Dynamic Markdown tool here.

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Smart Merchandising Technology Warehouse Management

If you are going D2C with Shopify, Scale Faster with Increff

Retail started from local stores and expanded nationwide, cross borders, with e-commerce. E-commerce provided a uniform platform business for brands to compete on. The traditional legacy brands, having huge landmark stores and a dedicated customer base, had to wrestle with hip startups that were born in the digital era. As fast-paced technology started transforming the future of retail, it completely changed the way we shop. 

What was memorable about brand stores was the unique environment they created by capturing its essence within the four walls and adding a peculiarity in interactions. This uniqueness and brand memorability get lost in multi-brand marketplaces. Marketplaces are standard platforms having their own purpose, that masks a brand’s individuality. E.g. you become a Macy’s customer or an Amazon shopper but the brand you shop for becomes secondary. Hence, D2C seems an attractive channel to directly communicate with customers and own the relationship. 

Brands selling directly to customers own their most important asset; their customer’s lifetime value. 

D2C is an emerging strategy to disrupt the market. It allows brands to grow at their own pace by eliminating the middleman and earning higher margins. It helps brands:

  1. Directly connect with customers: Having direct access to customer data gives brands the ability to customize every touchpoint. Connect with shoppers whenever they want, through emailers, push notifications, etc. 
  2. Innovate: Data enables brands to understand customers better and improvise basis demand. Manufacturers can optimize existing products or create new offerings by capturing the trend early. 
  3. Build stronger brand loyalty: Using upselling and cross-selling options, retailers can create more opportunities for sale and build brand loyalty. 
  4. Increase flexibility and agility: Having full control over product supply and demand allows brands to become more agile. Gain the ability to read and react to change fast. 

Going D2C is not easy. It’s important to have a D2C specific strategy, which addresses:

  1. Initial set-up – 
    • Building your website – Using the right e-commerce solution, that is affordable, scalable, secure and low maintenance is important. Specialized platforms like Magento and Shopify, serve as all-in-one website builders that are easy to work with. They provide multiple payment options and allow omnichannel delivery. Our web-based WMS solution, Increff Assure, has preintegration with both these platforms and we can be your technology partner. Assure is a multi-channel order fulfillment platform built specifically for fashion and lifestyle brands to improve topline and reduce operational costs. It manages inventory by tracking every piece using Unique Piece Barcode, ensuring 100% order accuracy and improving operational efficiency. Through fast and easy channel integrations Assure can manage inventory across multiple sales channels, online and offline, and display 100% inventory across all channels simultaneously ensuring higher sales and better visibility.
    • Deciding CapEx vs OpEx model of operations – Understanding whether you can support direct orders to your warehouse or do you need a warehousing partner is a next step. Increff Assure can help you manage inventory in your warehouse. Our Warehousing as a Service (WaaS) helps retailers switch from the CapEx to Opex model of operation as we manage anywhere, anytime warehousing through our trusted 3PL partners. Having the right tech foundation at each warehouse helps brands scale efficiently as their business grows with the increasing demand.
  1. Supply chain challenges – 

Inventory management tech-solution like Increff Assure helps optimize inventory across all sales channels to prevent understocking or overstocking at any point in time. Our Regional Utilization model helps distribute inventory intelligently across a network of managed warehouses, based on true regional demand. It helps minimize air shipments, promote surface shipments and reduce logistics costs significantly to facilitate faster deliveries. Our pre-integrations on Shopify with reliable 3PL partners, Shiprocket and Clickpost, ensures complete order traceability and timely delivery. Increff Assure has inbuilt returns management solutions that very few WMS solutions provide. It help in rapid returns processing and makes good inventory immediately available for resale to prevent loss in sales opportunities. 

  1. Usage of data and insights – 

Increff Assure’s 50+ insightful, actionable reports help brands make calculated decisions on inventory and resource management. They help in inventory reconciliation, identifying channels of higher sales for better order management, tracking manpower productivity, and improving efficiency by highlighting, and correcting, loopholes in operations. 

Channel diversification is an opportunity to build a new relationship with customers. It is about giving a reason to customers to buy directly while ensuring the sales on partner channels do not get impacted. Offering unique services, loyalty programs, or subscription services plays a major role. Omnichannel brands can also decide on differentiating inventory across different channels e.g. D2C channel can be used for launching new products, selling premium versions of existing products, or a limited product line. Gaining better control over consumer data empowers brands to cater to changing needs by providing personalized, authentic service, and making it memorable. 

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Smart Merchandising Technology

Inter-store transfers – Reshuffle inventory for optimum sales

As an established retailer, you require a wide range of styles in multiple sizes to meet the customer demand. The need for instant gratification has become a dominant force in retail, hence the primary requirement of having the right stock available in the right place at the right time. 

Constraints on store space, minimum display requirements, and demand forecast based on limited data availability, initially determined how the inventory will be allocated across a chain of stores. All these constraints led to overstocking and understocking across stores a few weeks after the season launch.

In situations where there’s excess stock present in stores with low demand, or when the fresh inventory becomes leaner in terms of width and depth in stores with higher demand, inter-store transfers help in improving stock availability. It is a process of re-distributing the existing inventory among the stores and making corrections to the allocations done during the pre-planning period.

Since every decision involves the resources of cost and time, retailers need to analyze the requirements and benefits before making these shifts. Inventory optimization through inter-store transfer has several benefits:

  • Improve inventory health – Boost sales of slow-moving articles by reallocating them to top-performing stores.
  • Increase inventory turns – Increase sales of available stock by redistributing its basis true in-season regional demand.
  • Improve stock cover and reduce stock-outs at SKU level – Minimize loss of sales by identifying the true Rate of Sale (ROS) for every SKU at the store-level. Ensure there is no over-stocking nor understocking anywhere which directly impacts the top line and margins. 
  • Increase full price sell-thru – Push stock from the stores with lower footfalls to those with higher footfalls and higher bill value. This directly increases the chances of selling at full price, thus impacting the top line and margins.  
  • Reduce brokenness: Minimize the broken stock (styles with only fringe sizes available) by consolidating broken stock from all the stores and transferring full-size sets to the ones where the likelihood of selling is maximum as per the latest trends.
  • Improve Omni-Channel distribution: Identify the right stock to be pulled out of Offline stores and transfer them to the Click and Collect stores or other stores that can be used as hubs for online fulfillment.

Increff Iris, our smart merchandising tool, helps in inter-store transfer to optimize stock at the most granular level. By calculating the ideal requirement for every Store + SKU, it utilizes excess inventory to improve stock health and has consistently helped bands achieve 20-30% improvement in stock health and ~30% improvement in sales. 

One of India’s leading formal wear brands used Increff Iris across 150+ brand outlets and witnessed a 40% increase in sales at the receiving store. It reduced brokenness by ~40% and prevented sales loss. One of the well-known International brands, expanding operations in India, reduced brokenness by 34% and uplifted sales by ~80% for the transferred stock. The overall store sales increased by 66%. 

Overstocking and understocking are some of the major challenges in retail. It not only limits proper exposure of inventory but also hugely impacts topline revenue and bottom-line margins. Increff Iris helps you make quick decisions on stock adjustments basis true demand patterns so the optimum potential of your brand can be realized, any time of the year. 

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Smart Merchandising Technology

Making online shopping easy. Give more than what your customers want

The rise of the internet and tech-advancements have moulded the way consumers connect with a brand. This relationship is now more value-driven and personal. While shopping has been around since history itself, the way we shop evolved dramatically with the rise of e-commerce. Digital Darwinism played a critical role in pushing companies to take the online route as the role of brick-and-mortar stores gradually shifted to healthy support structures that assist brands in selling on multiple marketplaces. 

“Digitization is no longer an option, it is a necessity.”

 Recent technological shifts have only moved in the direction to make e-commerce stronger and robust by empowering the consumer base. Providing an equal opportunity to homegrown brands to scale up operations and leverage digital infrastructure to compete with global brands, e-commerce extends power to customers to determine the true value of a brand. Today we are catering to a population that is digitally native and globally-connected. Sellers need to put the right technology in place that helps them serve customers better. 

“It’s much easier to lose customers today than attract new ones.”

To address major e-commerce challenges, Increff has designed specific solutions that help retailers address basic customer needs like:

  1. Full visibility of a range of products across multiple marketplaces, simultaneously – Since your customer can be anywhere, expose 100% inventory across all marketplaces with no bucketing or dedicated stock. Help your customers locate you, wherever convenient for them. 
  2. ~100% order accuracy – Use technologies like barcode scanning, bin mapping and photo identification to ensure the right product is picked and packed for your customer. With zero human errors or delays, guarantee precision and efficiency.
  3. Don’t hinder conversions, make shopping convenient – Live Inventory- order sync feature, lets your customer know stock availability instantly. Reduce order cancellations and disappointments by giving your customers a chance, at the perfect time, to select an alternative option as soon as their product of choice is low in stock or over. 
  4. Faster, accurate order fulfillment – Ecommerce is highly competitive and price-sensitive, hence distributed warehousing is the way forward. Effective, intelligent regional utilization helps reduce logistics costs by increasing surface shipments and delivering the perfect order from the closest local warehouse. This means faster deliveries at the lowest cost.

 The benefits extend to retailers in several ways, such as:

  1. 100% remote onboarding – Our tech-solutions are built for right-first-time foolproof operations. Through self-learning tutorials and fully scan-based operations, no expert supervision is required in 100% remote onboarding. This ensures the deployment is fast and friction-less.
  2. Easy Deployment – Advanced technology solutions integrate with, or replace the existing system seamlessly and rapidly to ensure no loss in sales. The transition is quick and effortless with a simple UI/UX designed interface that can be learned in no time and requires zero decision making. There is less dependency on skilled labour and more focus on delivering results.
  3. Efficient resource management, ideal picking, and packing – Fully automated, scan-based systems and error-proof operations ensure efficient working of each resource. From tracking every piece in the inventory to mapping every human action in the warehouse, the tool ensures accurate and fast order picking. No piece gets stuck or lost in the warehouse. We have proven competency in achieving ~99.9% fulfillment within SLA. 
  4. Faster return processing – About 20-30% of e-commerce orders are returned, not due to any defect but because customers habitually purchase more for in-hand comparison. Retailers incur heavy logistics costs on these returns and have a huge impact on the bottom-line and margins. Convert these returns into profits by expediting the return process. Simplify system complexities and make your inventory live and available for sale, almost instantly.

As e-commerce becomes more competitive, brands have a tough road to tread. The right tech support is necessary to not only develop one-upmanship but also predict the future in time to take appropriate action. Increff Assure removes complexity in inventory management and order processing and creates a user experience that is free of clutter, smooth, and fulfilling. Get Assured to know the difference!

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Smart Merchandising

Tough Challenges need creative solutions. Merchandise planning made easy now!

Assortment or option planning is a holistic process that blends fashion with finance. It helps merchandisers and retailers create a comprehensive store package that satisfies customer demand and allows businesses to achieve financial goals. A part of assortment planning is smart decision-making in merchandise planning and buying process. 

Gartner recognizes Increff as a key tech-player for devising befitting solutions for new-age brands. Increff Iris provides analytics-driven pre-season and in-season buy plans with tactical execution. Its algorithm-driven platform helps retailers better understand customer requirements and align planning to ensure higher store profits and bigger sales.

Budgets are too tight, margins are too lean, brands cannot afford guesswork in the buying process.

Retail has changed dramatically in the last year. Smart assortment planning is critical in providing hyper-localized recommendations that curate the right mix at stores and resonate with local shoppers.

No excess buying. Optimize store-level inventory for higher margins and sales. 

Pre-season planning: 

  • Store clustering –  Increff Iris takes one step further with a granular store-level analysis that is location-specific, and not region-specific. It creates a win-win-win combination for merchandisers, retailers, and customers by considering each store as a separate entity, with a different customer base and a unique size set ratio. 
  • Product ranging – Designing a perfect mix of category, price range, size ratio, etc. drilling up to 17 layers of attributes for predicting the ideal store mix. Getting precise width and depth in its offerings at the PoS/ store level, and overall regional level. 
  • Assortment / Financial Plan reconciliation – The assortment plan for each store is made in parallel with the financial plan. It is then adapted to the individual store to ensure complete inventory is well distributed to meet store-level financial targets.
  • Replenishment and flow planning – This is done considering seasonality, holiday or festive season, and recency. It involves planning for drops, NOOS (Not Out Of Stock) styles, replenishments, and replacements.  

In-season planning: 

  • Plan to actual reconciliation – Increff Iris intelligently handles supply chain inaccuracies by optimizing whatever inventory is available in the warehouse at the time of sales. Through proper allocation, it helps stores maximize revenue effectively. 
  • Allocation support – Planning for a new store or collection-level allocation, replenishment, or a possible replacement for bestseller styles, Iris offers inter-store transfers to reduce unnecessary buying. 
  • Open-to-buy – With quick store analysis, Iris has the capability to generate a buy plan at any frequency desired by the brand to increase inventory turns. It automates drop planning and style level planning for each store to increase sales. 
  • BI dashboards – Extremely useful for quick in-season decision making, the BI dashboards can instantly generate reports to analyze top-bottom sellers, drops, trends comparison based on stakeholder requirements. 

As the unpredictability of 2020 continues, it is a challenge for brands to determine trends and assess true customer demand. Hence it is critical to plan cautiously and optimize stores for a better experience and higher conversion. with Iris. Reimagine planning and allocation for consistent and profitable growth with Increff Iris.

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Business Smart Merchandising

Do you know what Zara and H&M do to be on the best-in-class Supply Chain list?

An efficient Supply chain streamlines everything from sourcing of raw material to delivery of the final product, adjusting and adapting to unexpected situations on the way. It not only gives brands the ability to diagnose an operational glitch and address it at the right time but also be more responsive towards societal needs. In the current scenario when the competition is high, a sustainable supply chain is a source of competitive advantage to boost customer service, reduce operating costs, and improve cash flow. 

Gartner’s Supply Chain top 25 list is the distinguished ranking of brand leaders, recognized for their achievement and advancement in supply chain capabilities. For this list, brands are evaluated on business health (ROPA, Inventory turns, Revenue) and Social responsibility metric (environmentally responsible supply chain). 

Only 2 Fashion brands have made it to the list so far, they are Inditex or Zara, and H&M. Zara has been on the list since 2010 and H&M since 2012. 

What makes them a class-apart? 

Their innovative demand-driven business model is centered around the customer’s decision-making process. The specialized real-time, demand shaping, and demand sensing tools help them immediately respond to market changes, increase flexibility, and speed of bringing innovative designs to the market. Zara offers 24 new clothing collections and H&M offers 12 to 16 collections each year.

Zara’s RFID technology ensures accurate inventory count and faster deliveries to the end consumer, while H&M through Treadler, its B2B service, helps clients accelerate sustainable change by overcoming internal barriers and accessing benefits of its global long-term supply chain partnerships for viable growth. Businesses today are not only implementing best-in-class technology to meet true customer demand, but also building sustainable partnerships for Industry and environmental benefits. 

How can you join the leader’s pool?

INCREFF’s sustainable, cost-effective SaaS solutions, ASSURE, WaaS, and IRIS are built for inventory optimization for both online and offline channels. Our cloud-based platforms are extremely easy to learn and use, without supervision. The best part is, we can get you started in less than 7 days. 

Increff ASSURE allows simultaneous 100% inventory exposure across all sales channels, so no piece is left behind. Its live-inventory sync feature captures instant sales even during peak time so your potential buyers know the exact availability and there are fewer cancellations. Low cancellations deliver a better customer experience, add value to the brand and build trust. 

While ASSURE is a fully automated and scan-based tool in itself, Increff’s Cloud warehousing service that runs on ASSURE lets brands have on-demand access to warehouses in multiple cities. There is no use of paper & pen and no human decision-making to minimize errors or delay in execution. Each piece is assigned a fully trackable unique piece barcode (UPB), which is more accurate than RFID. Once scanned, the location of a piece is recorded and referred to when pick-paths are defined at the time of order picking. Pick-paths are linear so there is no back and forth, and the picker’s time is most efficiently utilized. Return processing is fast and strict as the rejected piece is immediately moved out of circulation and its UPB is tagged with the reason of rejection. 

Increff IRIS is a cloud-based intelligent merchandising, buying and distribution platform that enables merchandisers to take pre-season and in-season decisions like what, when and how much to buy and where to showcase inventory via 100+ customizable patent-pending algorithms designed specifically for fashion and lifestyle business. For online sales, it analyses order location and distributes stock to ensure fulfillment from the local warehouse, reducing air shipments and logistics costs by nearly 70%.

The Global fashion industry has been heavily criticized for causing irreparable damage to the environment. Luxury fashion brands prefer to burn millions of dollars worth of clothes to prevent counterfeiting and protect intellectual property. We can help you protect the environment through our initiative of donating unsold inventory to the needy who cannot afford to buy good quality clothes.  

If you are sitting on a large pool of inventory and looking for a smart tech-tool that can help your brand realize its true demand potential, then you have reached the right place. Contact us today!