An Apparel Retailer Who Made Two Silly Mistakes and Lost Customers

This wasn't Mr. Apparel’s day. He watched helplessly as many of his customers left without buying anything.

It’s not that suddenly Mr. Apparel’s merchandise had lost all appeal. The designs were still unique, the fabric good, stitching awesome. The customers loved it; they also wanted to buy it. But most of them couldn't.

“Do you have medium size in this?”

“I want design number 16 in your catalog.”

“I love this outfit, but want x-small size.”

These were the constant refrains from customers that Mr. Apparel listened to.

“Sorry Mam, design number 16 is sold out. But it might be available in our Green store outlet.”

“No, x-small in this design is not available here, but our Red store outlet has it.”

“I am sorry, this item is sold out.”

“This too is sold out.”

Such were the answers of sales persons that Mr. Apparel heard, and he fidgeted.

Mr. Apparel knew these designs plus sizes were available at various outlets, and he wondered if the customers will take the trouble to visit them to buy the required item. He knew some might but many won’t. Retail, like life, is about giving a red carpet welcome to opportunity when she decides to visit you

He was dejected.

He went outside and looked toward the skies. Actually, Mr. Apparel was a bit of a romantic-as apparel retailers sometimes are- and liked looking at stars when things didn't work out.

That’s when Candoo arrived.

Candoo: the bird who is a paragon of retail wisdom and retailers’ best friend.

“Coohooot,” Candoo chirped

“Thanks God, you are here. Where did I go wrong, Candoo?” Mr. Apparel asked the bird.

“Mr. Apparel, it can happen to anyone so stop counting the stars. You made two silly mistakes:

You Didn’t Replenish your Stock: You see, your warehouse still has the stock. You should have streamlined your inventory management at regular intervals to replenish the stock. Now when the hype about the ‘new stock in stores’ is over, your stock in the warehouse will get stale and die.

And.

You Didn’t Consolidate your Stock: In retail businesses, especially those dealing in size and color items, efficient inventory management requires stocking your shops with the required colors and sizes of various items. Instead of spreading various items in, say, 20 shops with not even a single shop having a full range of sizes and colors, you should have stocked up your highest selling shops with a complete range of sizes and colors.

You need to perform periodic consolidation and check the SKUs spread over various shops but with minimum number of available sizes and colours. Then re-shuffle them so that there is a full range available at selected (high selling) shops,” Candoo the retail bird told Mr. Apparel.

“What should I do, Candoo? This seems like an uphill task.”

“Hire Spider-Man to do this, appoint a team of robots, or get a smart retail software programme…just do it.” Candoo flapped its wings and flew away.

Mr. Apparel felt enlightened. “I should call my friend Mr. Footwear. After all, he also deals in size and color items,” he thought and starting tapping on his cell phone.

Mr. Apparel seems like a good friend.