Slow Demand products makeup 35-40% of most retailer assortments and cannot be simply eliminated. In order to profitably sail the Slow Demand Product seas, you need to be equipped with a proper forecasting engine. By providing a forecasting engine that utilizes the correct algorithm for slow demand products, you have taken an important step in your destination to increase demand forecasting accuracy.
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All retailers face the fact that demand forecasting products that move slowly and products that move intermittently during the year is required to grow profits. In fact 35-40% of most retailer assortments consist of slow and intermittent products, while this may be well known, it is less known that demand forecast and how the supply chain software uses the demand forecast are the keys to making your turn goals and maximizing your GMROI. Read more
I call them “heartbeat” products. Every Retailer and Manufacturer has them. The slow or niche products that don’t sell every day but are still vital to your business. If you charted their sales history, it would look like a heart monitor, up one week, down the next, up and down, up and down. No gentle seasonal curves here, just jagged peaks and deep valleys. You never know week to week if you are going to sell none or a hundred. Often expensive, well-managed heartbeat products can be valuable sales drivers. Poorly managed heartbeat products can eat up your profits and burn holes in your open to buy. So how do you maximize sales and lower your inventory on these slow movers?
Slow and Intermittent traffic is bad, worse is a snowstorm shutting down the highway leaving you stranded in your car for 10 hours. There is nothing worse than slow or dead stopped traffic in a snowstorm right? Maybe, while we sit in traffic, we should consider the slow demand products in your assortment. Do your slow demand products need to be in your assortment? In reality, that’s the wrong question to ask, over 35% of your assortment has slow demand patterns. If you factor in the intermittent demand products, you are now reviewing over 60% of your products, a significant part of your inventory assortment and image to the customer.
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Slow demand products make up 35-40% of most retailer assortments. These products often are critical to the assortment because a top 20% product is often paired with a selection from an assortment of slow demand product choices. This large group of products in your assortment can ruin your turn goals and your GMROI when managed incorrectly. There are two key pieces that must work together for a retailer to win with slow movers: the demand forecast and how the supply chain software uses the demand forecast to manage the inventory. The results of poor buying are low turns and loss of capital for other product.
“How do you forecast slow demand products?” The same question was posed to me in three different meetings at NRF this year. Many software companies differentiate their demand forecast capability from their competition by highlighting their skill in forecasting slow product demand; at the same time, they strike fear into the hearts of retailers by highlighting retail losses delivered due to poor demand forecasting of slow moving products. The key to this discussion is to not get trapped into a no win conclusion. More than a great Demand Forecast is needed to attain winning results with these product groups. Like the story of the ‘Tortoise and the Hare’, Slow demand products are part of any assortment and can be big winners.