The Buy Should Be Informed
by the Plan. Not Built Alongside It.
Apparel buyers make the decisions that determine whether a season performs to plan — which styles at what depth, in which sizes, for which channels, from which vendors. When those decisions are made without a live OTB number, connected size curves, or assortment depth targets visible in the room, the plan breaks before the season starts.
RetailNorthstar connects the buy to the plan in a single workflow. OTB updates as you commit. Size curves are calculated from sell-through data. The assortment target and the buy quantity live in the same system.
The buy is only as good as the data you have in the room
Most buying errors are not mistakes in judgment — they are the result of making sound judgments with incomplete or outdated information.
Buying without a live OTB number
The OTB file lives with the planning team. When you are in the buying room making depth decisions, the number you are working from is hours or days old. You commit to quantities, then find out at reconciliation that you overcommitted a category — and the correction has to happen after the fact.
Size curves are applied from memory or gut
The size curve reference tab, if it exists, was built from a prior season's data that no one has updated. You apply the same size distribution to new introductions that worked for carry-overs — and then spend the back half of the season chasing stockouts in the productive sizes while marking down the ones you overweighted.
Style-level depth targets aren't connected to the assortment plan
The assortment plan has a depth target per style. The buy file has the quantities you actually ordered. They rarely match, and no one finds out until someone manually reconciles them. The breadth-depth trade-off — whether to add a style or go deeper on an existing one — gets made without the financial guardrail visible.
Vendor conversations happen before the plan is set
MOQs, lead times, and cost negotiation happen in vendor meetings while the assortment is still fluid. You commit to vendors based on expected quantities, then find out the line has been cut. Or you cut styles after committing to vendor minimums, and now you're overbought in categories that were already tight.
A buy plan is not just style quantities
RetailNorthstar manages all six dimensions of the buy in one model — so every quantity decision is visible in its full financial context.
The buying workflow, connected to the plan
Questions from apparel buyers
How does RetailNorthstar connect the buy plan to OTB?
Every style and quantity committed in the buy plan reduces the available OTB by the cost of that commitment. OTB remaining by department and period updates in real time as buy decisions are made. There is no separate reconciliation step — the buy plan and OTB are the same model. When the OTB for a department reaches zero, the system flags the overage before the commitment is finalized.
How does the size curve work in the buying workflow?
Size curves in RetailNorthstar are stored by category and channel, built from actual prior-season sell-through data. When you assign a total depth to a style, the size-level quantities are calculated automatically using the assigned curve. If you change the total depth, size quantities update proportionally. You can override individual sizes when needed — seasonal silhouette differences, limited-edition colorways, etc. — and the curve serves as the default rather than the constraint.
Can buyers and planners work in the same system at the same time?
Yes. RetailNorthstar is a shared planning environment. The merchandise planner sets the OTB and assortment structure; the buyer fills the buy quantities within that structure. Changes made by either role are visible to both in real time. The reconciliation meeting becomes a review of a shared plan — not a comparison of two separate files.
The buy should be informed by the plan.
See how RetailNorthstar connects OTB, assortment targets, size curves, and vendor commitments in one buying workflow — live in weeks.