Assortment & Category Planning
Assortments built for each store, and delivered as planned.
Most assortment plans are built in spreadsheets from last year’s sales. New items have no history, store groups are out of date, and the finished plan is retyped into buying and allocation by hand.
Dataviva Assortment & Category Planning optimizes the range for every store and channel from bottom-up forecasts of every item at every location, based on product attributes and the demand forecast, including items you have never sold. It sets breadth and depth within your financial targets and space limits. Then it sends buy quantities and distribution plans straight into purchasing and allocation.
It runs two workflows: seasonal, collection-based ranges for fashion and other short-lifecycle product, planned at style-color level with sizes handled automatically, and continuous ranges for grocery, specialty and other long-lifecycle categories. Retailers that have both, such as electronics chains, run them side by side.
4%
Higher Sales & Margin
4%
More Transactions per Receipt
25%
Lower End-of-Season Inventory
50%
Reduce Decision Time
Applications
Seasonal and Continuous Workflows
Plan each category the way it is bought. Seasonal collections are built pre-season by collection and drop, at style-color level. New items are forecast from their attributes, buys are sized for the whole season, and sizes are handled automatically from each store's automated size profiles. Continuous ranges are reviewed on the cadence you set, with listings, delistings and depth changes driven by how every item sells in every store. Run either one, or both for different categories of the same business, on the same stores, clusters and targets.
Store Clustering
Dataviva builds store clusters from how stores actually trade: sales, profitability and traffic, item and store attributes, and space. Clusters update as stores change. Use them to review the range across groups of similar stores. If you want, you can also keep one uniform range within each cluster.
Assortment Planning
A visual workflow combines attribute-level analysis with store-cluster reviews to set the assortment strategy. Dataviva recommends the right breadth and depth for every store, channel and location, within the sales, margin and open-to-buy targets from Merchandise Financial Planning.
New Items Before You Buy
New items are scored before you buy them, from their attributes and the performance of similar products in each store. The demand forecast works without sales history, so new lines compete fairly with proven ones.
Assortment Optimization
Dataviva optimizes the assortment for each store and channel from bottom-up forecasts of every item at every location, plus your strategy and rules. It accounts for cannibalization and halo between items, assortment rules and space limits, so every recommendation can be executed.
Space as a Constraint
Tell Dataviva how much of each product each location can hold, and assortment and allocation respect that limit. Dataviva does not draw or optimize planograms or store fixture data. It works alongside your space planning system.
From Range to Orders
Approved assortments become buy quantities and distribution plans, sent straight into Purchasing & Supplier Collaboration and allocation. Sizes and packs follow each store's size curve. Nothing is retyped between systems.
Refine as Sales Arrive
The range keeps improving after launch, because the plan updates as sales come in. Seasonal ranges can be adjusted mid-season: change depth, add or drop lines, or re-cluster stores. Continuous ranges are re-optimized at every review on the latest sales. Neither needs a spreadsheet re-plan.
Case Studies
Clothing Assortment Planning
Fashion, Clothing, Footwear, Assortment Planning
The leading Eastern European footwear retailer has hundreds of stores spread across a large geographic area, with widely different climates and customer buying power. They carried a limited assortment of branded shoes, with a unique store distribution negotiated with each brand. However, they have most of their shoes made to order in China, involving thousands of samples to choose from.
Health & Beauty Assortment Optimization
Specialty, Health & Beauty, Pharmacy, Assortment Optimization
After multiple acquisitions, this Health & Beauty chain was operating 2500+ stores of different sizes and formats with a too-small central team to manage assortments. Dataviva Assortment Planning solution deployment led to the centralization of the assortment matrix management which allowed the Health & Beaty chain to create a high-quality analytical base for decision-making…
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