Problem

A well-established regional brand in ladies ethnic wear using authentic Indian handmade textiles across 7 stores and 21000 sq ft faced a problem of excess inventory which was not aligned with its Sales.

Solution

We identified the category management for the business to hold good at a ‘category-silhouette-craft-size’ level as the client operated on high variety as its USP (unique selling proposition).
Further, we determined what constituted ‘great enough variety’ by fixing the number of variants under it after studying the offtake of individual designs from available ones across categories.

Thus, determining the TIL or target inventory level for category-silhouette-craft-size level made it easy for the client merchandising team to program their production planning. The team made changes in the production schedule to avoid over producing a certain category definition till it reached its ideal TIL (target inventory level).
We further extended the TIL levels of the FG category to translate into the inventory holding of raw materials: fabrics in various crafts and thus clearly identified fabric inventory investments to be held.

Outcome

The client saved a month worth of excess inventory in finished goods and could opt to save a lot more in raw materials.