Empty Hangers and the Store Call Out

By Gray King, CEO Sizeo

“I’m standing in a store. Why don’t we have any smalls?”

Raise your ✋ if you have ever been on the receiving end of that call or text!

At Sizeo have been hearing more from customers and prospects that it seems like there is a dynamism in their size selling.  What had always been the same seems to be moving around more. 

If you’re seeing it too, you’re not imagining things.

Sizing is more dynamic than ever, and it isn’t going to stop; it will to continue to accelerate. 

And yes, it could be weight loss drugs, and demographic shifts, and consumer preferences, and all the other reasons in some big combination.  That’s exactly why we built Sizeo to help automate the execution of these size × location challenges.

Here are some of the things we think of as best practices to ensure size-level execution in a dynamic environment:

1.    Use history + predictive AI to understand true demand, not just what you sold.  Getting out of the self-filling trap of selling what you bought is one of the most important things you can do. 

2.    Build size curves from the lowest level of granularity. Be as close to the customer as possible. Generic curves and aggregated demand destroy a lot of the opportunity; in order to really solve the problem, you have to understand and meet the local demand.

3.    Refresh size curves each buying season and feed them into allocation and replenishment systems. Every day you are getting more information, don’t wait a year to leverage what the customer is telling you.

4.    Continuously measure accuracy. Tracking how well your buys and allocations matched actual demand by size and location, and other key metrics, can help you close the loop every season.

5.    Bonus:  Use attributes like fit or fabric to help adjust your demand by size at the product level. That oversized sweatshirt is going to sell in different sizes curves than a fitted top. 

So the real point is that getting sizes right isn’t a one-time thing. It’s a continuous loop of learning, adjusting, and executing.

Love to hear from you if you are dealing with any of these issues, have things you think are important for size level planning, or have a particularly good story about an executive callout.