Fashion Merchandising Solutions
Protect your margins and give your buying and merchandising teams the stock, sales and planning insights they need.
With short seasons, shifting trends and changing demand, keeping the right stock in the right place becomes increasingly complex as your fashion business grows.
Effective fashion merchandise planning becomes increasingly important as your retail operation grows. When your existing systems can no longer keep pace, familiar problems start to appear:
- Right Stock, Wrong Place: Popular sizes and colours sell out in one store while the same stock sits unsold elsewhere, leading to missed sales and excess stock in the wrong locations.
- Manual Stock Decisions: Working out what each store needs, what should be replenished and what needs to be reordered from suppliers becomes increasingly time-consuming as the business grows.
- Disconnected Information: Stock, sales, purchasing and budget information spread across systems and spreadsheets makes it harder for buying and merchandising teams to maintain one reliable view of the business.
Futura brings fashion merchandise planning software, stock control and purchasing together within a single Retail Management System, providing one reliable source of stock and sales information across your retail operation. Plan stock requirements, manage size and colour availability, automate store replenishment and identify what needs to be reordered from suppliers.
As a unified platform for fashion planning and inventory control, Futura connects your head office, stores, ecommerce, turning chaotic data into clear decisions so you don’t overbuy stock or under-allocate to key channels.
Why Choose Futura’s Fashion Merchandise Planning Software?
Built With Apparel and Footwear in Mind: Generic inventory software isn’t always designed around the complexities of fashion. Futura is expertly designed to support soft goods, handling complex size curves, colour matrices, style variations and fast-moving seasonal lifecycles straight out of the box.
Stock Planning & Automated Replenishment: Use sales performance to help establish what stock each store needs, then automate replenishment based on those requirements. Maintain better availability across sizes and colours while reducing the manual work involved in getting the right stock to the right stores.
Recommended Reordering & Stock Balancing: Identify what needs to be reordered from suppliers while taking account of stock already held or on order. Futura can also help identify opportunities to move stock between stores, making better use of existing inventory before purchasing more.
Unified Omnichannel Visibility: Connect your physical stores, eCommerce platform, and wholesale channels to create a unified view of stock and sales. Track sales performance and stock availability across locations so you can easily reallocate inventory to wherever demand is highest.
Open-to-Buy & Merchandise Planning: Create and monitor Open-to-Buy (OTB) budgets using current purchasing, stock, intake and sales information. Compare planned figures with actual performance and available OTB, helping buyers and merchandisers maintain financial control while responding to changing demand.
Dedicated UK Support and Retail Expertise: You are not just buying software; you are partnering with specialists who understand retail. Our UK-based support team provides dedicated onboarding, training, and ongoing support with the continuity and expertise to understand your business as it grows.
See how Futura could support your fashion buying and merchandising teams.
At a Glance – Key Features
- Open-to-Buy (OTB) Budget Management
- Sales-Based Stock Planning & Replenishment
- Size Curve & Colour Matrix Management
- Store Grading & Profile-Based Allocation
- Automated EPOS & eCommerce Replenishment
- Real-Time Omnichannel Inventory Visibility
- Markdown, Pricing & Margin Management
- Historical Sales-Based planning
- Soft Goods Style, Size, & colour Matrix Management
- Recommended Supplier Reordering
- Inter-Store Stock Rebalancing
What Futura Merchandise Planning Brings to Your Business
Seasonal Budget Planning & Open-to-Buy (OTB)
Give your buyers greater financial control when planning seasonal ranges. Futura lets your team create and manage Open-to-Buy budgets across merchadise categories or brands for Spring/Summer or Autumn/Winter and other seasonal periods, comparing planned figures with actual performance, purchasing, stock intake and sales.
This gives buyers greater visibility of available budget as the season develops, helping them maintain financial control while keeping enough budget available to respond to changing demand and emerging trends.
Stock Planning & Replenishment
Use sales performance to help establish appropriate stock requirements for individual stores, taking account of both recent and longer-term trading patterns. Once those requirements are established, Futura can automate replenishment to help maintain the right stock levels as products sell through.
Better visibility of sales, stock and incoming stock helps your team identify potential overstock or stock shortages earlier, adjust orders and protect profit margins well ahead of time.
Mastering the Size Curve & Matrix
Missed sales often happen because the right size was unavailable. Futuras fashion merchandise planning software uses historical sales data to help determine size and colour ratios.
Flexible fashion matrices, typically based around size and colour, give your team clear visibility of stock and sales across each style and location. Combined with automated replenishment, this helps maintain the required size curve as products sell through, reducing the risk of popular sizes selling out while less in-demand stock remains elsewhere in the business.
Intelligent Allocation & Replenishment
Send the right products to the right locations every single time. Futura uses store grading to ensure stock matches local store profiles. A flagship store in central London can receive a completely different stock mix than a smaller regional shop. The software also automates replenishment based on live EPOS and eCommerce sales, ensuring popular stock is pushed where demand is highest.
Futura can also identify opportunities to rebalance stock between stores and recommend what needs to be reordered from suppliers, helping you make better use of existing inventory before purchasing more.
Without a doubt, the replenishment model that’s built into Futura (for both replenishment from warehouse and reorders from suppliers) is a big winner for us.
Éidhne Conlon, Head of IT, Carraig Donn
Connected Retail Management
Futura’s merchandise planning software functionality is part of the wider Futura Retail Management System, connecting merchandise planning with EPOS, stock control, purchasing, ecommerce and order management to provide a unified, end-to-end ecosystem across your entire retail operation:
Fashion Merchandise Planning: Frequently Asked Questions
How does Futura's fashion merchandise planning differ from basic inventory management?
Basic systems typically focus on tracking stock levels and sales. Futura’s apparel merchandising software goes further, connecting sales, stock, purchasing and merchandise planning. It supports Open-to-Buy (OTB) management, size curve planning, automated replenishment, recommended reordering and stock rebalancing to help retailers manage inventory and protect margins.
Can it handle multi-channel and omnichannel planning?
Yes. Futura provides unified visibility across physical retail stores, eCommerce platforms, marketplaces and wholesale channels.
How does Futura handle size and colour allocations?
Futura uses historical sales data to help determine appropriate stock requirements across sizes and colours. Flexible matrices and store grading help you manage different stock profiles by location, while automated replenishment helps maintain the required size curve as products sell through.
Is Futura suitable for footwear brands as well as clothing?
Yes. Futura is designed for soft goods retailers and uses flexible matrices to manage variations such as size and colour. For footwear, size and fit can be combined where required – for example, 8G – with additional product attributes available at SKU level.
Can we set custom Open-to-Buy (OTB) budgets?
Yes. You can set, monitor and adjust OTB budgets at different levels within your product structure, including season and brand. Allowing buying and merchandising teams to compare planned figures with actual performance and available OTB as the season develops.
How quickly can our merchandising team learn the software?
Futura provides structured onboarding and training to help buying and merchandising teams become confident using the system. Our experienced UK-based team also provides ongoing personalised support, so help is available as your processes and requirements evolve.
How does Futura help reduce end-of-season markdowns?
Better visibility of sales and stock helps your team identify slow sellers and potential overstock earlier. Stock can be rebalanced between stores where appropriate, while pricing and promotional decisions can be made before excess inventory builds towards the end of the season.
Can Futura recommend what stock needs to be reordered?
Yes. Futura can recommend supplier reorders based on stock requirements, current stock and stock already on order. It can also help identify opportunities to move stock between stores, allowing retailers to make better use of existing inventory before purchasing more.