Goal

The growing brand in ladies ethnic wear wanted to increase sales from its network of exclusive, large format stores. The stores would indent better-selling products by sending the product pictures to the head office but the central warehouse was often stocked out of the items demanded.

Solution

We first addressed the coding of the SKUs so that with the code alone, the replenishment team and warehouse team could identify the item, not needing product pictures. This was a hard task as the raw material fabric crafts ran into 25+ varieties and each had a multitude of different designs in multiple colourways, the combination running into thousands of options.
We devised codes in such a fashion that they were easy to remember by not only the sales staff but even for the consumer. Each and every individual design in fabric craft was thus identified. We started coding the new products being made with the new code as changing old codes of tens of thousands of designs would have been a Herculean task. Over a period of 6 months, the entire inventory was in new codes.

Next, we devised a ‘Product performance monitor’ as part of MIS to be tracked daily across the stores. The monitor made it clear to identify the designs that were candidates for repeat orders early enough, so that the production could be triggered right away without losing time and risking stock outs.

Outcome

The brand adopted a scientific, precise, and easy-to-remember coding system for every individual design of fabric including colourway.

An important product monitoring MIS was established that prompted repeat orders to capitalize on better moving designs.

Sales increased on account of better availability of the products in demand.