Buying & Planning Project
Group project between Quinn King & Julia Karns
The Task
This project was a group project with two members. We split the work fairly evenly so that each member would get valuable experience in every area of the assignment. However, we also chose to give the main portions of the steps to an individual who felt more confident in that area. I led the retail math and assortment portions, and Julia Karns led the writing and justification portions of the assignment
Creatively and clearly details the reasoning behind the decisions we made while formulating the buying and planning process we underwent throughout the semester. This was the final version showing everything we created for Abercrombie & Fitch’s 6-month retail plan. During this assignment, we created a 6-month plan, the finances for that plan, the assortment we would carry, and analyzed both Abercrombie and their competitors
The Goal
The Team
SKills Used
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The first step in this process was dealing with research of the market and how it’s current state would impact the forecasted improvement for the year. We started with researching three main concerns the current state of Abercrombie & Fitch, what it’s competitors were looking like, and finally the overall state of the segment and what governmental impacts would have for the market. This led us to project an increase of 4.5% across the final six months of the fiscal year.
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After the increase was decided upon we took our overall increase and looked upon each month individually and events and changes in the week cycle would impact key months. Our research indicated the need to focus on big improvements in December and a reduced November due to the falling of Black Friday.
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The Assortment plan was a key part in the process as this was one of the main ways of effecting a sales plan. This required more research into strengths within the store, key items for the brand, and trend analysis for the upcoming year. Through this research my team identified the key component for the assortment plan would be tops due to natural trends in Fashion and Jeans as a second big contributor due to the history of Abercrombie & Fitch and general yearly performance.
