Buying or Assortment Planning: Which one is right for my business?

Retail is under siege. With ever-changing consuming behavior, growth in digital commerce, international trade war, and the pandemic, it’s no surprise retailers are feeling the stress.

For all the talk about improving supply chain efficiencies or the next virtual reality tech to replace fitting rooms, at the end of the day retail is first and foremost about the product.

It’s no accident that our most popular article of all time has been and continues to be “what is assortment planning?” Now with the introduction of our Buying application last year, many are asking: what’s the difference?

Layered Buys

In a nutshell, assortment planning and buying are fundamentally built on the same technology. Assortment planning has the added capabilities to tailoring buys for unique micro markets and different sales channels. In order words, if you have multiple brick-and-mortar stores, multiple sales channels like e-commerce, social commerce, wholesale, or catalog and you want to tailor your buys for each of their individual needs, then assortment planning is the solution for you.

Buying

Regardless of how many physical stores or sales channels you have, every retailer must buy merchandise. daVinci Buying is designed for just that. It helps merchants buy products better, faster, easier, and without struggling through the error prone spreadsheets. With a centralized database, management gets instant access and visibility critical to the running of an efficient and successful business.

Essential Resources

Here are some additional resources to help you better understand buying and assortment planning:

• What is assortment planning?
• Why do I need it?
• How much are planning mistakes costing you?
• 3 ways to improve your planning process
• What’s all the fuss about attributes?

We’re here to help. Let us know what topics you are interested in.

We love hearing from you!