Assortment matters. Having the right selection of products on prominent display to draw customers into a store, and stocking items they’ll readily add to their baskets, are both key to maximising your sales. Location and timing are also vital. A product can be right for one store and not another. It may sell in spring but not in the autumn. So assortment management deserves a well-crafted process of its own.
If assortment decisions are driven by ‘gut-instinct’ replenishment ordering, you run a serious risk that some outlets will waste valuable shelf space on products that don’t appeal to their market, while customers in others walk out empty-handed because those same items are the ones they want but aren’t in stock.
Assortment management is about balancing lines with different roles; some are profitable, high-turnover items, others draw in customers who may only look at a ‘dream product’ but end up spending cash on something else. RELEX offers a wide range of flexible, real-time analytics tools that help you structure your assortment to maximize your profit. RELEX systems allow you to get immediate answers to questions like:
- What are the bestselling items in each outlet?
- Which products generate the most profit per square foot?
- What products can be found in the most profitable customer baskets?
- How are newly introduced products performing?
- Which branded lines would be good additions to your private label product range?
For assortment management to be effective it must be linked directly to replenishment. No assortment is static but RELEX systems make it easy to keep on top of constant market changes, seasons, promotions, launches and peripherals.
RELEX offers a range of flexible assortment-management tools that enable you to match freely definable assortment classes for each item and store, update them at will, and set any exceptions you require to your general assortment rules whenever necessary. Then RELEX’s automated replenishment optimisation takes care of the rest, ensuring that all the products in your assortments get to the right stores to play their different roles in the success of your business.