How To Create The Perfect Merchandise Calendar For Fashion Brands

When one looks at the working styles and schedules followed by fashion houses and branded labels, the ambiguous nature or clumsiness of the practice becomes clear. The delivery modes or the time taken to make a delivery, the sale, and buying dates are diverse among the various sectors. 

Market Times to Note for Women Garments

In the fashion industry, the timing makes a lot of impact as the right time to create and manufacture products, marketing, and introducing new styles are critical and fixed. Seasonal markets are the right time for introducing new styles and experimenting with them. The brand labels introduce at least five fashion lines per fashion season while there are six sale seasons throughout the year.

The brands that source the basics and regular garments have more than one season every 12 months. The sale season for each brand or fashion house differs based on their sales strategy. Sometimes it can be observed that a handful of fashion houses or brands are dragging out the time for showcasing the same line of clothes instead of swiftly and seamlessly transitioning into the next series. The clothing fashion calendar for women’s apparel typically contains four to six series or fashion lines.

• Spring

The first season is spring.

The trading time or peak sale time is somewhere between October to January. The deliveries last from the second half of January to the start of March. The fashion shows that mark the beginning of the season differ in their launch timings based on the various factors affecting business in the fashion industry. But most of the shows begin popping up on the radar during the second half of October.

• Summer:

The selling time is the same as spring collections, from October to January, while the two seasons show the difference in the delivery timing as the deliveries begin in the latter dates of March and go in till the beginning of May.

• Transitional fall :

The sale time is from the last of January to March, while deliveries are timed from mid of July up to August. During February, the New York fashion week follows, wherein other indigenous shows stay abuzz from the latter half of March to the mid of April.

• Fall

Sales last from March to April, with their deliveries lasting up to the later dates of September. 

• Holiday season:

The holiday season sells from May to June, with lasting deliveries deep into the latter half of September.

Further, some miscellaneous seasons are staples without much room for recreation, like Resort and Voyage and Back to school season in the kids market.

A merchandise calendar generally takes the form of a spreadsheet that provides a clear view of a brand's merchandise plan and marketing strategy for the latest product launch. It summarizes new product drops, time limits, and the course of action to create and release fashion to make brand reputation or popularity, induce leads, and eventually increase deal profits.

The uses of a merchandise calendar and the information to include in it will help one make and execute a successful retail marketing strategy.

Fashion retailing is about probing and anticipating what trends your target buyers want and when. Beyond trends, what and how important to a buyer is disclosed by attributes like history and current deals, the brand image, industry and creative endorsers, local events, and money caution. Data on target buyers' preference for cost, size, color, and style account for the final purchase and deals estimates.

After ordering merchandise, fashion merchandisers may help determine how goods are to be arranged and displayed within stores and online, as well as how it is promoted and priced to ensure target deals and profit boundaries.

Challenges in Merchandise Planning

While merchandise planning in the garment industry is vital, it's more likely that apparel retailers will face many challenges. It is essential to understand these challenges to draft a good merchandise plan.

• Unclear values

The primary thing for any fashion enterprise is to know its final result expectations. However, due to the diverse size and type of the business, it is hard to make a proper plan for the goods. When it comes to large retail stores, it's easy to diversify and concentrate on specific plans related to a particular department. The data in large retail stores are excessive and occasionally causes interference in good planning.

• Balancing between right creation & right volume

Planning merchandise for the long term can be relatively laborious. For example, placing an order for the coming season can be too stressful compared to planning only for the coming month. In such a situation, the goods planner will find it hard to balance the perfect goods and the correct volume.

One can guess, but it still can’t be completely accurate. Fashion retailers with tons of experience in the fashion business fail to know the right volume of the product they will need shortly.

Each seller's merchandise marketing calendar will look slightly different. 

One can get an idea of what their timetable should look like from the below topics:

• Merchandise Marketing Timetable Dates

The seller can organize a spreadsheet to include a new row for each month. One can produce the template for the entire time at once, but one can also go month-by-month. Within each row, the two columns at the beginning should be used to organize the data by date, including the day. Listing the days of the week can help remind the planner of trending hashtags that one can use for Instagram.

• Merchandise You Plan on Marketing

The" Merchandise" column is where one can list the goods or products they would like to sell on any given date. It could be a quick note that shows the title of the goods they want to sell, or it can be more detailed based on the planner's need and interest. The planner should decide if they are going to break down the marketing of the goods into everyday advertisements or if they want to centralize a specific apparel or collection every week and focus on distinct details each day.

Marketing and advertisement Ideas

Not all goods marketing efforts need to be considered a full-fledged marketing drive with several mobile parts. They could be uncomplicated but crucial. Checking marketing schedules online many months prior can help one deliberate on ideas for appropriate drives. In addition to the national celebrations, it is known that there are also other days that have gained importance among the consumers.

Objectives and Objects For Each Wares Marketing drives: 

A retailer's ultimate aim is to convert website callers or physical store callers into buying guests. Nevertheless, there still would be numerous vital points before a caller becomes a paying client. 

Defining goals for each of the wares marketing

Drive or campaigns can track and measure the success of a marketing strategy. It's also a great way to test and learn from the former approach to adapt the new and latest fashion collections marketing plan.

Further, there are some pretensions and objects that one can consider for their upcoming goods marketing drive.

• Tell the brand’s story.
• Educate the client about a new product
• Upsell or cross-sell a specific product
• Generate leads (collect dispatch addresses)
• Increase website business for unborn remarketing
• Figure brand mindfulness
• Promote an event
• Convert callers to buyers
• Promote a trade

Upcoming Retail Events

Include a section on the merchandising calendar for forthcoming deals events, like pop-up and pop-in shops, trade shows, and request appearances. Adding these events to the calendar is a great way to align them with the marketing schedule.

Once the sellers have decided which products they want to partake in and their goals or targets for each, the coming columns in the merchandising calendar would become essential as they give specific details for marketing the apparel and fashion collections. Next, determining precisely where they want to publish the advertisement for the most returns on investment through profits and great sales. Some retailers prefer smaller columns and group all social media channels into one column, but some may like to separate them into their columns.

Another process that can help create a good merchandise calendar is assortment planning, which is a process done by the seller to fix the number and types of products in a line. Crucial questions in this process include choosing the force depth and variety breadth and the blend between introductory and fashion wares of the diverse to maximize anticipated gains.

Conclusion

The brand labels stick to their personalized fashion calendar without constraining themselves with the industry's trends. Anyone with an innate desire to survive and conquer the industry should keep up with the retailers' delivery, seasonal sale, and shipping details. At Fashinza, find solutions and tips to all retailer-related problems regarding merchandising, manufacturer, and supplier relations.