Get Your Hands On A Merchandising Table In Your Database

During times of merchandise transition, you want to get your hands on a merchandising table in your database. Specifically, you want to know the launch date of every item offered by your merchandising team. You want to pull the item number or sku number, the product division / department / category the item belongs to, the cost of goods for each item, and the first date the item was sold.

This information matches up to the customer tables in your database. From here, you can run your own analytics. A good first step?

• Count new items by month of introduction by division / department / category. This immediately tells you if your merchandising team understands that future success is fully dependent on new item launches today.
• For all new items, measure if existing customers are buying the new items at higher / average / low rates compared to prior years. Your existing customers are like canaries in a coal mine. If they don't like the new direction of your merchandising team, they'll vote ... loudly ... with their wallet.

There are product/merchandise assortment catastrophes happening everywhere we look these days. When customer behavior changes (as it changed post-COVID), leaders respond by changing the merchandise assortment ... which causes customers to change their behavior. Somebody has to be on top of what is happening. Why can't that person be you?