Merchandise

Calendar
 The importance of planning and
control in today’s global environment
• Vital elements for success.
• Nike- Japan – Korea, Thailand, China, Philippines,
Indonesia, Vietnam
• In order to be effective in this global marketplace,
there are many factors that must be overcome:
– Communication
– Difference in cultural and business values
– Varying production lead time and shipping schedule
– Foreign governments
Hence a detailed planning and fail-safe control system is
vital for successful apparel merchandising.
 Changing consumer demand
• Retailers and consumers demanding frequent
offering of more and more styles
– 2 seasons per year
– 4 seasons per year
– 12 offering per year and 6 months
development cycle

By failing to plan, you are planning to fail.

 Planning and control tools
• Bobbin show-1973/ American apparel
manufacturers association (AAMA)-closer
coordination and control with regard to
merchandising and manufacturing activities.
 Strategic planning
• Broadest type of planning
• About allocation of resources/overall company vision
• Departmental action plan to support the company’s
strategic plan and coordinate with other departmenal
plans.
• It’s a total company commitment to achieve coordinated
vision.
– Where are we now?
– Where do we want to go?
• Target market, marketing mix, resource allocation, expected results
– How do we get there?

Example*- Levi strauss, VF Corp, Reebok (*Refer to the scans)

 Marketing calendar
• Central mechanism to all merchandising and
manufacturing plans.
• Planning drives merchandising product
development schedules, sales appointments
with important customers, manufacturing
planning, and shipping schedules.
 Key elements of marketing calendar
• Line preview dates by season
– Prototype/pricing
• Line release dates with season
– All sales samples ready for sales team
• Start ship date
• End ship date
• Weekly sales plans
• Weekly shipping plans
 Merchandising Calendar
• Primary control tool in an apparel company
• Designed to control the key events needed to
get the right apparel products, in the right
mix, at the right price, to the customer at the
right time.
• Also known as key events calendar, line
development calendar, line calendar, critical
path calendar, critical task calendar
• This control tool sets forth the starting and
completion dates for all critical events necessary
to achieve a successful season.
• The basic ingredients of a successful apparel
season are:
– Manufacture what consumers want
– Deliver the proper product mix on a timely basis
– Maintain low raw material, work-in-progress and
finished goods inventories.
– Accommodate changes.
 Critical Path Method(CPM)
• Determining the important functions necessary to
perform an activity or series of activities required to
achieve an overall objective.
• Whether an activity that follows a particular function can
successfully take place without the critical function being
accomplished.
• Analyzed to determine the time required to accomplish
it.
• A typical merchandise calendar may have 35 to 60
functions for a product line. At four seasons per year, this
represents 140 to 240 tasks that must be performed
within a year. If a company has four product lines and
ten offerings per year, the number of tasks jump to 1400
to 2400 tasks per year.
 Role of computer application
• Database and spreadsheet
• Project scheduling programs
• Creation of weekly or daily task list which
allocate tasks for departments or personnel
responsible for their on time completion.
 Development , Execution, and
Maintenance.
• Important element of pre-season planning(an
activity that coordinates product development
and sales expectations with material purchases
and production capacities.)

• A merchandising calendar should be reevaluated

after each season and adjusted when necessary.
• The critical control tool should become more
accurate each year with the input from previous
season.
 Line plan summary
• Provides guidelines for line development
teams.
• Focused efforts in one direction.
• Elements:
– The no of fabrics in the line by product group.
– The no of styles in the line by product group.
– The no of constructions in the line by product
group.
– The no of SKUs in the line by product group.
 Sales forecasts
• Production orders are placed before initial
sales orders.
– Style ranking system
– Pragmatic forecasting(based upon experience)
Shelf Stock Plan
Style Status Report
 Order tracking
• Continued globalisation of the sourcing of
apparel products leading to complex order
tracking systems
• Use of computer technology and Internet
• Electronic data Interchange
• Real-time data capture through computer
controlled unit production systems or bar
code readers at operator workstations to track
orders.
Interfering with other departments
• Cooperation from other departments