Happy Holidays! To all our employees, clients, subscribers and partners around the globe, thank you for your support! Our gift to you is our recently updated Retail Math “Cheat Sheet”. It includes retail acronyms, terminology and formulas. Whether you are new at inventory planning or a seasoned pro, we hope it helps you. We wish you a peaceful and joyous holiday season and a happy new year! To get your Free copy, click the link on our Happy Holidays page. Thank you again, Jim Lewis, CEO Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC   The post Happy Holidays! Get Your Free Retail Math Cheat Sheet appeared ..read more

By Jim Lewis, CEO Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC Okay, it’s not 2 days, it’s more like a month-long event now. Regardless of how many days it is, the combination of Black Friday and Cyber-Monday is a huge percentage of most retailers’ business. How it will affect the rest of the holiday selling season will soon be revealed. While the numbers are still fresh, it’s a great time to analyze your business and see what intelligence can be gleaned. 5 Questions Looking back at what happened helps you plan for the future. Here are 5 questions we ask, along with recommendations of how to answer them. Wh ..read more

By Jim Lewis, CEO Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC Just about every company does it. Using retail analytics to answer a specific question on Monday morning. It’s the most fundamental question of running a business: How was business last week? Answering that question can be very simple or very hard and time-consuming based on a company’s resources. For retailers it can be straightforward. But for wholesalers it can be more difficult because they have more data sources. Each retailer they service has a data feed plus any direct business they do comes from ERP. Data Collection The collecting of the ..read more

By Lennon Barrow, Business Analyst Intern at Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC On today’s retail menu, we are exploring a recipe for success. Essentially, it boils down to portion-control. Just as a chef controls the portions of each ingredient in a recipe to ensure that each dish is consistent and satisfying, retailers must allocate their inventory to meet customer orders and demands. Inventory allocation is a crucial aspect of inventory management for retailers. It ensures that the right “portions” of products are available for customers, preventing situations where customers are left unsatisfie ..read more

By Jim Lewis, CEO Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC Ladder plans, waterfalls, weekly planner- whatever you want to call them- should be a vital part of your inventory planning process. We call it Item Planner. It’s one of the most searched for and visited pages on our website. If you’re not familiar with any of these terms, let me acquaint you. What Is An Item Plan? An item planner is a tool that lets you plan sales, profit and inventory needs by week. It then tracks actuals against that plan and finally revises that original plan based on the trend. You can decide how many weeks to use to calcula ..read more

By Jim Lewis, CEO Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC I recently attended Toy air in NYC. It was great to catch up with clients and prospects. But the best part was seeing all the incredible products. The toy industry has always been very innovative and this year was no exception. I felt there was a good balance between electronic/video products and good old fashioned tactile card and board games. Most people I spoke to were optimistic about the industry. But in all honesty, it’s hard not to be when you’re surrounded by great toys. Not so thrilled about only having a handful of retailers that contro ..read more

By Lennon Barrow, Business Analyst Intern at Enhanced Retail Solutions Merchandise planning is of paramount importance in the retail industry and plays a crucial role in the success of a business. To put it simply, merchandise planners on both the wholesale and retail side seek to satisfy consumer demand by putting the right product in the right place, at the right time, and for the right price. In today’s dynamic retail environment, merchandisers need a data-driven and adaptive approach to effectively perform this role. So, what better way to explore the use of AI in merchandise planning than ..read more

By Jim Lewis, CEO Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC Last week I attended the Microsoft Envision event in NYC. This event was designed to showcase how Microsoft has integrated AI into their platform. ERS has been a Microsoft partner for over 20 years and is now part of the AI Cloud program. I’ve been to a lot of Microsoft events over the years, but I felt this one was different. They showed their new technologies through on-stage testimonials from some of the biggest companies in the world. Everything from health care to finance showed the practical use of the technology. ChatGPT Comes Alive Since ..read more

By Lennon Barrow, Business Analyst Intern at Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC. What is consumer sentiment?  Consumer sentiment is an economic indicator which measures how optimistic consumers are feeling about the future state of the economy. If consumers are feeling optimistic, then they are more likely to make big-ticket purchases and more willing to spend on nonessential items. On the other hand, if consumers are feeling pessimistic, then they are more likely to save money rather than spend. Consumer sentiment helps economists, analysts and inventory planners predict retail demand.   ..read more

By Jim Lewis, CEO Enhanced Retail Solutions LLC Now that Bed Bath has gone to the Beyond, home suppliers are desperately looking for ways to make up that volume. Small suppliers already grappled with this when the management and strategy changed just before the pandemic. Now larger suppliers, and big brands are facing the same thing. The truth is, there really are not any other retailers like BBB out there. At least not with the volume they could churn. There’s Walmart and Target but they operate on lower margins and not everyone is equipped to service them. The assortments are fairly limited ..read more