What is Merchandise Financial Planning?
One way to think of Merchandise Financial Planning (“MFP”) is that it's about determining how much money to put in each Buyers’ wallet. Buyers in turn go to market or work with in-house Design to buy/obtain the right products for all their sales channels to sell to customers. The monthly/period allocation of MFP budget for each buyer is commonly referred to as the Open-To-Buy (OTB). MFP works synchronously with Assortment Planning, providing the strategic financial framework that forms the Buyers’ shopping list. Just as buyers use Assortment Planning to construct their product vision and create beautiful assortments to entice customers with. Merchandise Financial Planning is used by planners to ensure the buys from assortment planning meets the strategic financial goals of the business. Background When I started in the retail industry more than 30 years ago, Merchandise Financial Planning [...]
