Omnichannel forecasting
Most fashion brands sell the same item option two ways: to wholesale customers who order ahead of the season, and through their own channels, such as a webshop and own stores, where the consumer buys week by week. The two follow different curves, and one combined number hides both. Omnichannel forecasting means forecasting each channel on its own sales and planning the purchase on the total. Fashion Planner does exactly that, per item option.
The challenge
These are the problems we meet when a brand plans wholesale and its own channels from the same number, and the reason omnichannel demand forecasting keeps coming up in planning teams.
Wholesale demand comes in as pre-orders and reorders, weeks before the goods are in store. Channel demand is the consumer buying through the season. Added together, the curve says neither, and a forecast built on it inherits the confusion.
Wholesale is planned in the planning tool and the webshop in a spreadsheet, or the other way round. Nobody sees the total until someone adds them up by hand, usually after the purchase order has been placed.
Webshop sales come with returns. A forecast built on gross sales overstates what the channel really sells, and a buy based on it ends as stock nobody asked for.
A wholesale forecast leans on customers, order books and the history of the collection. Channel sales are more like a retail curve. Using the same model for both means at least one of them is forecast with the wrong tool.
A webshop growing fast can mask a wholesale business that is losing customers, and the reverse. Without a forecast per channel, the total looks fine right up to the season it does not.
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How Fashion Planner solves it
Fashion Planner is a planning and forecasting platform for textile, interior, beauty, and fashion businesses. Channel planning is part of item forecasting, so wholesale and channel demand are planned on the same page.
Turn on Channel planning on an item option and the page shows three cards: the wholesale forecast, a channel forecast, and a total forecast that adds the two together. The purchase is planned on the total, so neither channel is forgotten.
The channel forecast is built on the item option's net sales in your channels, with returns deducted, and follows the item option's seasonality profile. You choose the model and adjust it by index or by hand, just as you do for wholesale.
A Forecast models tab shows how different forecast models would forecast the item option's channel sales, next to the forecast you have selected. You see the alternatives before you commit to one.
Wholesale details brings forecast precision, sales, customers, seasonality score and customer types into item forecasting, and Channel details shows the channel sales index against last year. The numbers behind each forecast sit under the card you are looking at.
Splitting the forecast by channel is also a change in how the team works. BZIMPLE 360 reviews buying processes, resources, and workflows, and Planning as a Service puts an experienced planner in the seat when yours is empty.
Fashion Planner is used by fashion brands including Rains, Barons and DK Company brands. See customer cases
In practice
A forecast is only as good as the history it reads and the method chosen for it. Why fashion demand is hard to forecast, and how to choose and adjust a model per product, is the subject of our article on forecasting in fashion. Forecasting by channel applies the same discipline twice, once to each kind of demand.
Your own channels sell through the season, which makes the seasonal curve matter more than it does for a wholesale order book. How to read that curve while the season is still running is covered in our piece on seasonality and in-season management. It is the channel forecast that tells you first when a style is ahead of or behind plan.
Wholesale has its own blind spots, above all the customers who are not buying what similar customers buy. How to find those gaps in the order book is set out in the article on sales opportunities in wholesale. Separating the channels makes those gaps visible instead of covering them with channel growth.
What changes
The gain comes from seeing both channels clearly before the purchase, not from a more complicated forecast.
A wholesale forecast and a channel forecast that each follow their own sales history
A purchase planned on the total, so neither channel is under-bought or forgotten
Channel forecasts built on net sales, so returns do not inflate the buy
Forecast models compared before one is chosen, not after the season
One page where planning, sales and management read both channels the same way
Questions we get
Channel sales are the sales your ERP records in your own channels, such as your webshop and own stores, as opposed to the invoices to wholesale customers. Fashion Planner reads both from your ERP and forecasts them separately.
No. Channel planning is switched on per item option. Products sold only through wholesale keep a single wholesale forecast, and you turn channel planning on where the channel sales are large enough to deserve their own forecast.
The Forecast models tab compares several models on the item option's channel sales, including seasonal models, next to the forecast currently selected. You choose the model on the channel card and can adjust it by index or by hand.
Fashion Planner synchronises with the ERP so sales, stock and open orders come from your own data. Integration is a full service on our side, so it does not turn into a project for your IT department.
Related reading
Three articles that go deeper into the parts of this page.
Why fashion demand is hard to forecast, and how to turn an uncertain number into a better inventory decision.
Read articleHow to read the seasonal curve early enough to act while the season is still running.
Read articleFinding the bestsellers your wholesale customers are not buying yet.
Read articleNext step
A demo is the fastest way to find out whether this fits your channels, your wholesale business and the way your planning week actually runs.
Give us 30 seconds of your time and we'll let you know if Fashion Planner is right for you. Can we help?
