Retail Category Management
Are you looking for optimisation of your buying operations?
Are you looking to reduce the number of SKUs and reduce stock holding?
Are you looking to improve gross margin and increase sales?
The introduction of modern category management best practice will be your answer! In addition to all beneficial financial effects, CATMAN is also the key to crystallising your concept in the eyes of your customers and makes your business the “first choice” for them!
Category Management is often best understood by middle management and staff and implemented with great skill when explained and work-shopped by expert consultants. Ensuring every product has a unique role to play in creating a perfect assortment needs very clear understanding by procurement teams and good methods of data management analytics.
Simple ABC analysis these days falls short of the tools available to systematically demand a certain performance from every product range. Foley Retail Consulting has restructured commercial teams in several companies from supplier led or listing fee motivated assortment strategies, to much more successful ranges supporting a clear retail position and sending a unique proposition to a retailer’s customers.
We offer the following:
Preparation stage:
- Data collection
- Data organisation in a manageable format
- Category, supplier and product performance assessment
Assessment stage:
- Analysis and identification of consumer needs
- Product classification according their roles and types of ranges exposing gaps in the range
- Pricing analytics indicating lack of competitiveness or margin opportunities
- Creation of ideal tender process and benchmarking of buying prices
- Product hierarchy reorganisation
Organisational structure and goal setting:
- Ideal structure of team, workload division and head count recommendation
- Installation of KPIs for all procurement teams including workshops on how to structure both front and back margin negotiations
- Control and monitoring procedures to ensure compliance
- Logistics and back haul management
Execution stage:
- Creation of merchandising plans by category, group and product in order to achieve category goals
- Sales floor & promotion strategy, including internal communication method
- Communication to all stake holders within company, Supply chain, Marketing, Logistics, IT, Retail operations