The Benefits of Improved Merchandise Plan Reconciliation for Retailers

Discover how improved merchandise plan reconciliation can benefit retailers, reduce errors and increase accuracy. Learn how to address common challenges such as data accuracy, departmental conflicts, uncertainty, calculation complexity, and communication. Find out how using a merchandise planning tool like Toolio can help retailers reconcile disparate plans, make real-time data-based decisions, and optimize their bottom line.

Shoptalk Recap 2023

Discover the latest best practices and insights from the 2023 ShopTalk event, including the use of AI in retail, and learnings on finding efficiencies and putting customers first. Stay up-to-date on the latest trends in the industry with this informative blog.

How value-added fulfillment services improve inventory management

Managing inventory effectively is an ongoing challenge for e-commerce brands. Rapidly changing trends, the expectation for regular product drops, and even unforeseen weather events can drastically change what items a shopper is interested in. 

How Successful Retailers Combine Art, Science and Technology to Win with Ken Pilot (A Webinar Recap)

Retailers must balance art, science and technology to win in today's ever-evolving landscape. Find out how the best brands are getting ahead from retail expert, Ken Pilot.

NRF Recap, Trends and Learnings

A recap of NRF 2023

What Retailers Can Learn From Black Friday Cyber Monday (BFCM)

My favorite holiday of the year (Black Friday, of course) has recently come to a close and retailers are still giddy about the unprecedented levels of sales - even amid recession and inflation concerns. Despite it all, shoppers showed up and they showed up big. Here’s my take on the shopping behaviors and key trends we saw this year.

How Retail Brands Can & Must Increase Sustainability

Sustainability is a hot topic in fashion and apparel and luckily we have an in-house expert on the topic, Mary Saunders co-founder of For Days. Here she shares her take on why sustainability is important and how brands can improve

15 Questions to Ask When Considering a New Merchandise Planning Software

If you’re a retailer looking to modernize your operations by embracing merchandise planning software, the tool you choose matters. The right one will help you save time, gain actionable insights and grow your business through better planning, while the wrong one can be a waste of your valuable funds and time...

What is an Allocation Analyst & Do You Need One?

There are so many roles and responsibilities within the retail world, from planners to merchandisers/buyers, allocators and beyond. They’re all important, but it can be difficult to know which to prioritize, especially when it comes to some of the lesser-known titles. Here, we’ll take a look at the Allocation Analyst position, what it is and whether you need someone to fill it. 

How to Perform a Killer Comp Shop

Competitive (comp) shopping is essential to the life of any retail professional. Whether you’re a merchant, planner, buyer or designer, it’s key you understand your competitor’s assortments, the shopping habits of the customer and much more.

The Top Technologies Retail Brands Should Invest in at Each Revenue Stage

The retail tech landscape continues to evolve and growing retailers struggle to keep up with the changing technology-enablement for their growth. Here's a quick recap of the technologies we see customers and friends leveraging as they grow.

Top Thought Leaders in Retail: Who Should You Be Following?

Eleven of the best and brightest thought leaders in retail to follow on LinkedIn and Twitter

What Retailers Must Consider when Planning During a Recession (a Webinar Recap)

Holiday planning is always an interesting beast in retail, but add a potential recession, linger supply chain "stuff" and unemployment fears and it gets even more intense. In this recap from our webinar on the topic, we highlight the takeaways for merch planning teams.

Retail Planners vs. Merchandisers vs. Allocators

Buyers, retail strategic planning, and allocation roles are all extremely important in the retail ecosystem. Read more about the difference in the jobs here.

The Top Traits of a Great Merchandiser

In retail, merchandising is one of the most sought-after positions - and also among the most complex. While the job certainly comes with an undeniable cool factor, it requires the merchandiser to wear a lot of hats and own a lot of responsibilities...

To The Next Generation of Retailers…Say Good-Bye to Merchandise Planning Spreadsheets

Inventory is the most expensive asset for retailers, yet many still manage it in Excel, decades-old on-prem softwares or through homegrown solutions that long-ago lost priority to maintain and improve. The solution for next-gen retailers is a next-gen software, like Toolio.

4 Surprising Things I Learned During My First Job in Retail Planning

Retail planning careers can be perfect for those who love fashion, numbers and really, really big spreadsheets.

The Next-Generation Commerce Stack

Retail and its supporting tech landscape have undergone a massive transformation over the past decade, which was only accelerated by the recent pandemic. What sets leading retailers apart is their adoption of modern technology across the entire business. In this post, we talk about the key differentiators of modern commerce technology and the combination of solutions that make up the tech stack used by the industry's most innovative, high-growth retailers.

Navigating the New Normal: A Guide for Merchants and Planners

Looking back at our Post-Covid predictions and the strategies we’ve observed from our customers, we believe retailers, and more specifically, merchandising organizations, should focus on these five actions to build more resilience and emerge as leaders in the next-generation of retail.

Post-Covid Prediction 5: The leaner, distributed, and more productive workforce

Organizations will need to break old paradigms to make way for a new wave of workforce transformation. In order to survive, retailers will need to figure out a way to do more with less, remotely. Winning companies will look to technology to support better information sharing and collaboration among remote teams and automate wherever they can to maintain productivity with a leaner workforce.

Post-Covid Prediction 4: Moving beyond DTC

Distribution strategies will remain in flux for the months and years to come, but when the dust settles, brands will have more control over distribution channels and points of sale will proliferate. Wholesale will morph into new formats such as leased spaces and online marketplaces, which will allow brands to get closer to their customers.

Post-Covid Prediction 3: The Resilient Supply Chain

After the pandemic, supply chains will not only be optimized for cost, but also stability, flexibility and speed. Retailers will prioritize having a diversified production network, reduced inventory levels and more redundant fulfillment mechanisms.

Post-Covid Prediction 2 - Seasonless Assortments

Post Covid-19, the winning brands and retailers will break out of the vicious markdown cycle with a larger base of timeless products complemented with smaller, carefully planned and timely introduced collections.

Prediction 1: Retailers Will Leverage Technology

Toolio’s first prediction about the retail landscape post Covid-19 looks at the increasingly complex planning environment retailers will face and explains why they will need to embrace technology to manage this.

5 Predictions for the Post-Covid Retail Landscape

How will the retail landscape look post-Covid? Toolio’s 5 predictions point to retail trends we can expect to see.