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The buy was once a bet placed months out and lived with. At Country Road Group, up to 40 per cent of it now sits unspent until the season is already trading.
Group CEO Steven Cook has spent his first 15 months tightening open-to-buy across the portfolio, alongside a broader reset of inventory and cost of doing business. Open-to-buy sets how much stock or money a retailer can commit to new merchandise in a given period, and holding a portion of it in reserve is what has allowed the group to react in season rather than absorb the consequences of a call made two seasons earlier. Cook credits it with the margin rate uplift and with pulling the business back from the deep discounting that has defined Australian fashion for the past few years.
“So we no longer have these heavy drops monthly, and a lot of carryover inventory,” Cook says. “That’s allowed us to really lighten up on how much we promote. So you get newness all the time, and newness within our businesses sells.”
Witchery is the furthest along at 40 per cent, which Cook says is working phenomenally for the womenswear label.
“Country Road is circa 15 per cent,” he said. “If we pulled the home category out of that, it’s probably closer to 20 or 22 per cent, only because home has longer lead times and is harder for quick response.
“Whilst there is still promotion, it’s not as deep, and it tends to be categoryspecific. That’s why you’ve seen the margin uplift in our business from a rate perspective, and it’s also something that will allow us to pivot to the market.”
The reserve gave the group room to move when the market turned in 2026 with the US-Iran war. Teams pulled back on commitments and year-end inventory closed about $27 million lighter. Country Road Group lifted sales 1 per cent on a currency-adjusted basis, with adjusted earnings before interest and tax of $2.3 million, up $20.4 million on the prior period.
The approach mirrors a wider rewiring of how buying works. Wholesale buying in 2026 has swung towards agility over volume, with retailers placing smaller and more frequent in-season orders, while real-time data and AI have become central to forecasting, assortment planning and buying decisions. Tariffs, volatility and shifting demand have pushed buyers to prioritise flexibility over long-term commitments, and 78 per cent of senior leaders now rank B2B wholesale as their top investment priority.
Making that work depends on the systems underneath it. Digital showrooms have replaced the linesheet for much of the market, with JOOR dominant in fashion and luxury, NuORDER widely used across department store buying teams and Brandscope the default across Australia and New Zealand, where agents build assortments for independents. The catch is that most of these platforms manage the order and little else, with visibility ending once product ships. Integration remains the weak link, with only 9 per cent of wholesale brands running fully integrated ERP systems.
On the planning side, vendors are collapsing merchandise financial planning, assortment, forecasting and inventory into a single model, with open-to-buy and weekly sales, stock and intake connected directly to assortment decisions so pre-season and in-season planning run in the same place. Machine learning models now read colour, fabric, silhouette and price tier to build demand curves for styles with no sales history, while scenario planning lets buying teams stress-test a buy before volumes are committed. McKinsey has put the prize at a 5 to 15 per cent reduction in inventory and a 15 to 25 per cent improvement on stock-outs.
Cost of doing business was Cook’s other lever. Roles were re-prioritised and marketing budgets were restructured so approvals no longer guarantee release, with funds unlocked once trajectory is proven.
“We’re not putting the vast proportion of budget into firm branded marketing that you’re locked into, but we’re keeping some flexibility,” Cook explains. “So whilst there will be spend up front, it’s really what we spend as we move through the season that’s important.”
The group also pulled fulfilment out of stores and back into its distribution centre, which Cook calls a significant cost-saving initiative.
Parent company Woolworths Holdings Limited reported a bottom-line loss of R250 million for the Australian business, around A$21 million, against an R1.43 billion loss in FY25. Cook says the group measures itself on EBIT.
“Our PBT or after-tax view holds a lot of exceptionals tied to our restructuring of the business that aren’t really applicable to operation, sales, or losses, hence why we are saying there is a return to profitability in FY26 from a headline perspective.”
Witchery delivered comparable sales growth of 9.5 per cent and Politix 10.2 per cent, both benefiting from repositioning work. Country Road showed improvement through the second half and enters FY27 under new leadership, with Lucy Nutter appointed MD for Witchery and Country Road.
International expansion carries much of the FY27 case. Witchery launches on Nordstrom.com on October 16 with a curated range of more than 100 styles, following the Dani Michelle Edit in September. Accessories and footwear are running strongly across the group and Mimco has relaunched into its 30th year, which Cook says has gone exceptionally well over the last six weeks.
“During the Blitz in London during WWII, Harrods opened and traded every day. You need to be really strong and sturdy and really throw yourself into the face of consumer confidence issues, challenges, all of these things.”
Top-line growth has not been overpromised for FY27, with profitability the measure Cook says the group can weather the year on. “
So that is inventory control. That is cost control. It’s leverage spend, so that we spend as we go versus spending up front. Those are the real key components.
“Our customer can spend; it’s whether or not they choose to spend, and whether or not they choose to spend it with us, so we have to just be really bloody good at what we do.”