Journey to Delivering the Best Aisle vs. the Endless Aisle Approach

Shoptalk Vegas 2024 brought together industry insights from some of the world’s biggest retail brands. From AI to assortment planning, find out how brands and retailers are evolving to meet consumer demand and grow profitability. Discover practical ways to remain competitive and on pace with industry peers.

As Macy’s CEO Tony Spring said, “it’s not about the endless aisle approach anymore, it’s about the best aisle”. This requires partnering with a “Best of Breed” AI retail technology partner that can enable you to create curated assortments to deliver your “best aisle” strategy. Rely on a partner designed for long term planning that ensures alignment, efficiency and profitability. By automating and streamlining these processes, brands and retailers can dedicate more time to understanding their customers and creating experiences that drive demand.

From the adoption of AI to merging merchandising with marketing, it’s clear from Shoptalk Vegas 2024 that retail is moving in a much faster, responsive way that demands a more agile approach to demand planning, assortment allocation and inventory optimization. Retailers and brands must adapt to these emerging trends, embrace the need for collaboration and respond quickly when a trend window opens. Calculated risks become more confident with technology partners that understand your market and can deliver the ROI and niche to your market.

Back to Basics

Emphasizing this “back to basics” movement, assortment rationalization is taking center stage with brands and retailers working to streamline and increase efficiencies. Macy’s was cited for their move to restructure their merchandising to allow buyers to narrow their focus to one that is more laser-focused on products for profitability. Kohl’s is another example, which has seen a revitalization in its brand through efforts to drive foot-fall through targeted partnerships with brands like Sephora and Amazon.

Strategically cutting back on merchandise by reportedly 30%, is a move Forever21 is using to recapture customers. It’s a unique pivot for a brand known for its omnibus approach to fast fashion and is now looking to present a more curated and intentional collection over its trademark multi-floor retail footprints. Similarly, e-tailer Zappos is expected to reduce its merchandise by 40%, a move welcomed by partner brands for its ability to offer more exclusivity rather than getting lost in a sea of product pages.

By utilizing assortment data, brands can gain better insight into product rationalization and create better merchandising strategies and assortments rather than a “spray and pray” approach. This just shows how important a focus on getting the right product, in the right place and the right time matters to profitability.

Demand Creation

Before increasing profitability can be addressed, there’s another component that needs to be examined: demand. How do you generate and grow demand in your products, particularly within the current media landscape?

Brands and retailers are challenged by the speed by which trends are grown, shown and thrown out the door thanks to the rise of short-form content. Meta shared the startling fact that 3.5 billion reels are shared daily, demonstrating the necessity for brands to figure out clear paths to breaking into these conversations. Social media is predicted to remain the go-to destination for education and entertainment, making it the most lucrative channel for creating demand.

Collaborations and limited-time drops will become increasingly more useful tools in a marketer’s playbook. Take for instance the Barbie madness of the summer of 2023. Many brands capitalized on the movie’s popularity by introducing Barbie pink products, with limited inventory and time frames for trending products. This raises the question of how to be more agile and responsive?

Several panelists cited Crocs as a prime example of how collaborations can elevate a brand into a new level of success. These endeavors can be supported with greater access to merchandise visuals and data, which can create the best-curated assortment.

Changing Industry Relationships

Today brands have to think just as much like a media business as a retailer. Social media has connected brands to consumers in more personal ways than were ever possible before. This has led to a change in the dynamics between consumers, brands and retailers. Manufacturers have direct access to consumers and are getting closer to the retailer’s D2C space. Furthermore, we’re seeing legacy brands pick up the pace when it comes to authenticity, creativity, and risk-taking in their messaging and are now giving the startups a run for their money in terms of content that connects and resonates with key consumers.

Centric Market Intelligence™ helps close the gap with consumers. By identifying those trends and utilizing what is available from a brand’s or retailer’s library of products. retailers can curate assortments and products in response quickly. It’s then easier and more time-efficient to tweak and quickly deliver to market.

A Technology Partner that Delivers the Best Aisle

Centric Software® is the market leader for providing best-of-breed AI-driven PLM, planning, pricing and inventory solutions. With Centric Software’s AI and ML technology, teams can be empowered to automate, drive efficiency and maximize margins with:

• One source of truth for all
• Streamlined workflows and processes
• Better, data-driven decision-making capabilities
• Further enrich data with planning, market intelligence and pricing
• Visually-driven decision-making for ease and efficiency

Centric Software helps teams to focus on delivering a more customer-centric and curated assortment to achieve the “Best Aisle” goal, rather than going down the costly, high volume inventory of the “Endless Aisle.”