In his final column for Ragtrader - the publication he founded - the late Fraser McEwing takes a dive into the secret world of fashion planners.
There has been a quiet revolution in the retail buying system that makes you wonder how stores controlled their stock and purchasing 50 years ago. The wisdom of what to buy used to be the sole domain of the buyer, usually under the judgemental eye of a controller. Suppliers spent vast amounts of time and money on ingratiating themselves with buyers because buyers were the fairy godmothers with order books equivalent to wands.
In fact, suppliers still dote over buyers, sometimes bordering on bribery. The old system probably worked because retailing was far less competitive than it is now. It was not unusual, even in department stores, for the buyer to be partially active on the selling floor as well, and could then draw knowledge for future purchases on a direct input from the customer. But in today’s retail environment, growth in size and complexity of the market have given rise to a retail executive class that is acknowledged by insiders as the most important in the retail hierarchy.
Going under the innocuous title of ‘planners’, these people are typically positioned between the company CEO and the buyer. Finding one to talk on the record was virtually impossible, even though (thankfully) a few were willing to supply information anonymously. They see their principal role as being to marry the objectives and character of the store to its merchandise. But they don’t place orders with suppliers; the buyer still does that.
A planner tells the buyer what garments will be required for the upcoming season in minute detail, along with delivery times and locations. She leaves it to the buyer to source the goods. It is rare for a planner to negotiate directly with a supplier. Planners work in a closeted world, where they are not well known, even to the retail industry at large, except by reputation. They are well paid, with salaries towards 200K for the top performers. They have a hierarchy of their own, too. Big retail organisations have planning managers to direct and allocate departments each planner is expected to cover.
There is no technical course that trains planners – who are typically female, incidentally. Far from being starstruck by fashion, their background is likely to be in finance, with a strong skill base in statistics. From there, they learn on the job. They must adopt a digital view of the merchandise. Garments are regarded as simply units that are intended to yield a profit. But, having said that, planners must acknowledge, and factor in, fashion change which would be discussed and agreed upon at management meetings, usually with a significant input from the CEO and buyer. In that sense, fashion change is primarily concerned with garment category swings before minutia in styling.
The role of the planner is always predicated on successes and failures from the previous season. As one respondent put it: ‘planning is a science based on previous sales. Essentially the planners create budgets and forecasts based on the previous history of the business.’
Typically, the planner would have a plethora of statistics about where, when and how the merchandise performed last season. From there she would construct a buying plan for the upcoming season. The complexity of that plan would be vast. It would typically detail budget allocation percentages in garment categories, the placement of incoming new merchandise into which stores (bearing in mind that different locations will have different consumer preferences), plus buying and selling prices. The plan would also determine size breakups and predictions of the demand for style types and colour groupings based on the previous season.
The intractability of some buyers, when knocking back what a supplier says is a guaranteed winner, may have nothing to do with the buyer’s opinion but rather all about steadfastly following what the planner has decided.
Once the planner has ‘set up’ the season, the job does not end there. The apparel industry is notoriously unpredictable, with sudden shortages or short-term hot selling novelties (like Barbie) distorting the market. They are usually brought about by the ripple effect from high impact, but unrelated events. A big social movement like Covid can send planners back to an almost blank drawing board. In fact, it was probably the planners who were key to the survival of the retail apparel industry during that disruptive time.
Another example of disruption is Mosaic Brands, the apparel conglomerate which has just fallen into voluntary administration after recently deciding to wind down five of its brands – Rockmans, Autograph, Crossroads, W.Lane and BeMe amid the company’s perilous financial position. The planners attached to Mosaic’s competitors would need to decide whether or not to build up their stock levels to cater to an upturn in demand.
Online is another category that has been relatively recently added to the planner’s workload. That sector marches to the beat of a different drum when compared with bricks and mortar stores. The planner must decide on the allocation of funds to support the online business, along with all the other variables that apply – many of them uniquely – to online trading.
In overview, the planner’s role in a retail business is twofold. On one hand is what could be described as the production of an internal manifesto that will deliver a perfect profit result whilst, on the other, it is the continual revision of a season’s plan which always turns into a moving target.