AW Lab (part of Bata Group) improves merchandise and assortment precision
Industry Retail
Challenges
» Continued company expansions and channel growth made it difficult to manage both inventory and ordering
» Staying relevant and keep engaging local consumers
Benefits
» Increased the responsiveness of the preseason planning process
» Improved ability to react fast to market demand at any point in the merchandising cycle
Aptean Assortment Planning improved merchandise and assortment precision
AW Lab, the international ‘urban sport-style’ retailer part of the Bata Group, has further improved merchandise and assortment precision after implementing Aptean Assortment Planning.
AW Lab operates through more than 250 direct and franchise shops in Europe and Asia and a growing online presence.
75% of AW Lab’s business is footwear – featuring brands such as Nike, Adidas, Puma and Converse. The remaining 25% is apparel and accessories, with AW Lab’s private labels playing an important role.
“AW Lab customers are youthful girls and guys, fashion and style sensitive” – states Marcello Pinato, Merchandising Manager at AW Lab. “They know what they like, they want to collect experiences more than goods, they love brands that express innovation. As we expand throughout Europe and Asia, we want to offer our customers a combination of the most renowned international brands and local ones. We want to be “glocal”, global and local at the same time”.
With a consolidated presence in Italy and Spain, AW Lab has also opened stores in Czech Republic, Romania, Georgia, Singapore and Malaysia. The company has plans to open 70 additional shops in the next 3 to 5 years to further expand its presence in Northern and Eastern Europe as well as in every major Asian country.
AW Lab is part of the renowned footwear retailer Bata, present in 100 countries with over 5000 stores. Bata has successfully implemented Aptean Assortment Planning throughout the Group.
The Challenge
International expansion and channel growth have generated new challenges for AW Lab. The sports lifestyle market in southern and eastern Europe has been growing year after year and big retailers from northern Europe have seen the opportunity to expand in these regions making competition fierce.
In order to expand to new markets, grow its online business, as well as manage the franchising channel, AW Lab needed to meet the most diverse local tastes of different geographies, support differentiated buying behaviors and shopping journeys, as well as manage climate differences which are a significant component of assortment planning decisions.
With innovation and ‘glocalization’ as two key differentiators of its brand, AW Lab refreshes assortments and shop windows weekly to continually ‘tell new stories to their customers’. As the business keeps expanding, assortments need to be accurate, relevant and engaging for local consumers.
To support these challenges, AW Lab has undertaken a project called ‘from Consumer to shelf’ with the following objectives:
› Accurate customer-centric assortments
› Diffusion of best business practices throughout the company
› Focus on an Omnichannel approach
› Inventory optimization with a strong focus on large stores
› Better control of markdowns
The initiative leverages the Aptean Assortment Planning solution, which is now completely live throughout the business.
Importantly, the deployment of Aptean Assortment Planning has been the driver for AW Lab to reengineer its internal processes and further improve communication among functions. “We used the merchandising calendar from Aptean Assortment Planning as a backbone to our activities and created an AW Lab calendar with clear timelines and responsibilities. This has improved visibility on key strategic decisions, collaboration across functions, and has ultimately increased the responsiveness of the process as a whole. Aptean Assortment Planning has turned out to be a great enabler for organizational change,” stated Pinato.
The Solution
Aptean Assortment Planning supports AW Lab throughout the merchandise lifecycle, from strategy to customer.
What is crucial about the project is that by implementing Aptean Assortment Planning, AW Lab was able to clearly “divide” and fully support the processes of pre-season and in-season planning.
“AW Lab works largely with international brands and most of our budget is spent in the buying phase, 9 months before the season,” explained Pinato. “This means the pre-season planning process is critical to us. Still, with our own brand growing and facing the volatility of international markets, we are placing increased emphasis on in-season planning and the ability to react fast to real demand at any point in the merchandise cycle.”
Aptean Assortment Planning supports AW Lab in generating the pre-season sales plan which combines the knowledge coming from the stores with the experience from product departments.
Based on these inputs, the range plan is generated which defines the assortment targets by store grade. The assortment plan is then refined both at a country and channel level.
“This is key because in sportswear particularly, the percentage of products and brands you will sell by country are very different; and the same applies when you compare the web with the retail chain. What sells online differs significantly from what sells in our direct stores or franchisees,” commented Pinato.
During the sales season, Aptean Assortment Planning further supports the replenishment department and merchandising in fulfilling stores needs and identifying the products that need reordering.
“Aptean Assortment Planning helps us answer three main questions: where to sell the product, how to sell the product, and what is our stock position in the network to quickly respond to market demand.”
The Benefit
Before implementing Aptean Assortment Planning, AW Lab was relying on spreadsheets for planning which meant cumbersome processes and long hours spent in consolidating multiple files with various formats and versions.
“With Aptean Assortment Planning, the front-end of the software is still Excel, but behind a familiar interface, we can leverage the full power of a sophisticated tool. The process is shared and standardized and we all work with the same formulas and the same indicators (KPIs).
Additionally, data is synchronized so we don’t need to worry about integrating different versions of the plan. This is key considering the tight timelines we work with, and that a planner manages up to 4-5 collections and seasons per day and a massive amount of data,” added Pinato.
With a single version of the truth and an integrated collaborative process, benefits for AW Lab include:
› more accurate customer-centric assortments
› reduced inventory costs across the chain
› faster, more responsive planning
Remarkably, the process flow and design of the solution is standardized with the other businesses within the Bata Group.
Pinato concluded: “By implementing the same tool, we were able to satisfy the needs of two different chains in the market, one is AW Lab, a sportswear retailer that works predominantly with brands, the other is Bata, where 80% of products are inhouse designed and developed. This was a great achievement, made possible by the unique flexibility of the Aptean Assortment Planning solution.”
Looking Ahead
AW Lab is currently working with Aptean Assortment Planning to further enhance its visual planning capabilities.
Enriched with data entry and editing functionality, such as the ability to add new products or modify the assortment, AW Lab’s visual planning tool is evolving from providing strong visualization and reporting functionality to offering complete planning support. Aptean Assortment Planning visual capabilities will provide users with a visual preview of the assortment. With these functionalities AW Lab will be able to include in the planning and buying process all stakeholders from different departments. The stakeholders will be able to collaboratively review and adjust the collection in different ways, both numerically and visually. Visual evaluation and editing will be associated to the numeric analysis, performing powerful simulations and planning in a faster and more intuitive manner.
“Aptean Assortment Planning helps us answer three main questions: where to sell the product, how to sell the product, and what is our stock position in the network to quickly respond to market demand.”
