Santa believes in antuit.ai! See why the world’s largest toymaker uses antuit.ai to assist in his planning and supply chain operations.

Countless headlines shouted about 2020 retail sales impacts, but how dramatic have those impacts been? What does a 30% increase in growth mean to business operations? Have things begun to stabilize or normalize? What are retailers and consumer products companies that supply those retailers doing to adjust? Based on US Census data and other industry sources, the charts below provide a visual representation of 2020 retail sales and information on what to expect going forward.

REPRINT:  As seen in:  https://www.sdcexec.com/warehousing/article/21159637/antuitai-fashion-retailer-improves-inventory-performance-and-increases-weekly-inseason-sales-with-aienabled-markdown-optimization 

Who: $2.5B omnichannel fashion retailer with 40% of revenue from online

Challenge: Optimize the revenue from in-season clearance across all channels for all brands

Solution: Replace manually-intensive Excel tool with AI-powered markdown optimization solution

• Results: In-season clearance and fulfillment optimized with AI-driven pricing recommendations:
  80% increase in week-to-week sales for a pilot using two season codes
• Non-pilot codes experienced 28% decline over the same period
• 250% improvement in turns without sacrificing margins
• Pilot implementation delivered in under 4 months
  

The Challenge

Overcome multichannel inventory management challenges to optimize in-season sales

With growing eCommerce channels and increased online shopping behavior, omnichannel retailers are grappling with the increased complexity brought on, in part, by the combination of possibilities for direct and in-store fulfillment. Siloed decisions around allocation, promotions, in-season pricing and, especially, inventory transfers fail to capture the opportunity for margin improvement that lies in the interconnectedness of online and stores.

The panic buying and consumer demand shifts ravaged demand forecasts, leaving most CPG companies reverting to manual intervention to fix their stock issues. While unavoidable in the beginning, this event highlights the shortcomings of many forecasting methodologies: a basic assumption that demand is steady and slowly changes. Consumption sensing takes a new approach by creating a "conversation with the consumer" to predict consumer demand and identify shifts for near, mid, and long term forecasting and planning.

As the economy slowly begins to open, retailers must prudently plan on what to do with their inventory as their stores reopen and demand returns. In this video, David Barach, VP of Marketing and Pricing Analytics, demonstrates antuit.ai’s Retail Inventory Simulator as a follow-up from his previous Webinar: Retailers, COVID-19, and the Future – Part 1.