Triaging Your Inventory: Decisions for Stability

During the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic, The Parker Avery Group conducted a four-part webinar series, Reconstructing Retail.  This series covered some important topics and focused on helping our clients and friends in the industry. Throughout this series, we shared our firm's pragmatic thoughts and perspectives, with the understanding that for most of us, the pandemic and its aftermath represented the transformation of a generation or even our lifetime. With so much on hold for many retailers and brands, our webinar series allowed us to look forward and at least help retailers catch back up to where they were before or perhaps even get ahead. We all witnessed abundant innovation opportunities that continue today.

Our Triaging Your Inventory webinar focused on inventory and the supply chain. We all recognize the continued distortion in our industry in different ways. Retailers are still trying to keep up with highly fluctuating demand and precarious supply chains. While many of the topics or suggestions may apply to all retail sectors, our emphasis in the webinar was focused on those retailers deemed ‘non-essential’ that were closed and needed to plan to restart.

When introducing the webinar, there was a lot of talk about when shelter-in-place orders would be lifted and when the economy would reopen. At that moment, we did not try to guess the timeframe, nor were we able to ensure when ‘Day 1’ would be. But we did know we would leave our homes again. We would come out from behind our screens and webcams. We would shop again. Consumers would be back. And we, as an industry, needed to be prepared.

Why was focus on inventory so important, especially for retailers that were shut down? We’d venture to say that in February, even early March of 2020, few of us would have forecasted what happened so suddenly by mid-March. We had plans for the season, we were hopeful for a strong 2020, and we had no idea of the coming pandemic and its impact on the world. Post-March, many retailers’ only focus was ecommerce fulfillment and any omnichannel shopping options they may have had. Otherwise, stores were dark, inventory was aging quickly – and unlike fine wine, aged inventory does not get better with age.

For our Reconstructing Retail inventory focus, we introduced the “triage” concept with 3 stages:

• Level 1: Critical – what do absolutely need to address right now
• Level 2: Urgent – what are the next things that will need to be managed
• Level 3: Recovery – what’s next, and how can we balance further stabilization with future opportunities

The webinar featured Amanda Astrologo and Rob Oglesby from Parker Avery, joined by Joe Skorupa, long-time RIS News editor and industry-recognized subject matter expert on all things retail and CPG.

In this Talk Retail to Me episode, our retail experts discussed:

• How to evaluate potential inventory options – risk vs. reward
• How to think about your assortments moving forward
• How to consider future demand, by channel, based on likely store opening and ramp-up scenarios
• What systems and tools will be most useful as you manage through the immediate season and simultaneously plan for the next

Learn more about The Parker Avery Group by visiting: https://parkeravery.com/ 

 

You may also like this content:

Five Expert Steps to Finally Solve Omnichannel Execution: https://parkeravery.com/industry-experience/five-expert-steps-to-finally-solve-omnichannel-execution/ 

Ask the Experts: In-Store Omnichannel Fulfillment of Omnichannel Orders: https://parkeravery.com/ask-the-experts-in-store-fulfillment-of-omnichannel-orders/ 

Retail Store Inventory Assessment Exposes $65 Per Square Foot in Hidden Profit: https://parkeravery.com/industry-experience/retail-store-inventory-assessment-exposes-65-per-square-foot-in-hidden-profit/ 

 

Introduction music:  On My Way by Kevin MacLeod
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4163-on-my-way
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Cover image by Jorge Guillen from Pixabay