Many brands. Many factories.
One order book.
RetailNorthstar for sourcing agents and buying offices is one connected system for the purchase orders, WIP tracking, and delivery analytics an agent runs across its brand clients and their factories. A sourcing agent or buying office sits between apparel brands and multiple factories, coordinating development, orders, and production on the brand’s behalf for a commission — and today most of that coordination lives in spreadsheets and email threads.
Run your own operation on RetailNorthstar. And when a brand client runs it too, work the same POs and WIP the brand plans against.
Execution across every client lives in files nobody else can see.
An agent office runs the same operational spine as a brand — orders, milestones, shipments — multiplied by every client on the roster. The burden lands on the agent, because coordination is what the commission pays for.
Every brand wants its own reporting format
One client wants WIP by style by week. Another wants it by PO by month, in their template. The underlying production status is the same — but the office rebuilds it separately for every client, every week.
The order book is fragmented by design
A workbook per client, sometimes per client per season. The merchandiser running one account cannot see that the same factory is loaded up on another — so capacity conflicts surface as late deliveries, not as decisions.
Milestone slips surface when the brand asks
The factory knew the fabric was late a week ago. The update sits in a message thread or an inbox until the weekly call — and the agent looks last to know, in a relationship where being first to know is the value.
Execution quality is the margin
An agency earns its commission on orders shipped well. Claims, air-freight disputes, and late deliveries come out of that margin and out of the relationship — and the cost of chasing status across factories is carried by the agent alone.
One system for the order book you run on everyone’s behalf.
Sourcing agents, buying offices, factories, and vendors can run their own internal operations on RetailNorthstar — the same line plan, buy plan, PO, and WIP workflow apparel brands use, applied to a multi-client order book.
Work the same plan your client plans against.
When a brand you serve runs RetailNorthstar, the collaboration layer already exists: the factories and suppliers on its orders log milestone progress, raise delay flags, and confirm ship dates there, and the brand’s buyers see every update inside the same system that holds the buy plan — no email chains, no spreadsheet attachments. As the brand’s agent, you work the same POs and WIP the brand plans against: the buy the brand locks is the demand signal, POs generate from it, and milestone status flows back into it.
That changes the shape of the weekly status call. Instead of reconciling your tracker against the brand’s tracker, both sides look at the same WIP and spend the time on decisions — what to expedite, what to split, what to renegotiate.
Recommend RetailNorthstar to your brands
The easiest client to serve is one whose plan you can see. If a brand you work with still plans in spreadsheets, an introduction from its agent carries weight — you are the one who feels the reformatting burden on every order. Book a demo, tell us you are an agent or buying office, and ask us about partnering.
Agent firm or brand-side team? Different pages.
This page is for the external firm — the sourcing agent or buying office serving multiple brand clients. If you are a brand’s internal sourcing team deciding vendors and costs for your own assortment, that story is at For Sourcing Teams. If you run production for a brand, see For Production Teams. And if you are a factory or vendor updating milestones for a brand on RetailNorthstar, see For Factories & Vendors.
Working tools for agents and buying offices.
Free and ungated — templates, calculators, and guides from across the RetailNorthstar cluster.
Production WIP Tracker Template
The tracker an agent office maintains — styles, milestones, ex-factory dates — as a free spreadsheet.
T&A Calendar Template
A time-and-action calendar in Excel, built backward from the in-store date.
Vendor Scorecard Template
How brands grade their suppliers — OTD, quality, responsiveness — so you can run the same scorecard first.
Landed Cost & Margin Calculator
FOB to landed to margin — the math both sides of a cost negotiation are doing.
Lead-Time & On-Time-Delivery Calculator
OTD is the number your clients quote back to you. Measure it the way they do.
How to Build a Buy Plan
What your brand client’s buy plan contains — and why order quantities land the way they do.
Apparel Formula Library
PO coverage, initial markup, fill rate, and the rest of the supply-side math — with worked examples.
Questions from agents and buying offices
Is RetailNorthstar built for sourcing agents or for brands?
Both sides of the same workflow. RetailNorthstar is an apparel planning platform built brand-first — line planning, Open-to-Buy, buy planning, PO generation, WIP tracking, and allocation. Sourcing agents, buying offices, factories, and vendors can run their own internal operations on the same workflow. This page covers the agent firm; a brand’s internal sourcing team is covered on the For Sourcing Teams page.
Can an agent use RetailNorthstar without its brand clients being on it?
Yes. An agent or buying office can run its own order book — POs, WIP by style and milestone, factory records, delivery analytics — on RetailNorthstar independently. Clients who are not on the platform still get their reporting in whatever format they ask for; the difference is that it comes from one system of record instead of a workbook per client.
How do we work with a brand that already runs RetailNorthstar?
POs generate from the brand’s buy plan in RetailNorthstar. The factories you place orders with update production milestones, flag delays, and confirm shipment dates in the brand’s vendor collaboration layer, and the brand’s buying team sees those updates in the same system where it manages the buy plan. If you serve a brand that runs RetailNorthstar — or expect to — mention the relationship when either side talks to us.
How do we introduce a brand client to RetailNorthstar?
Book a demo and tell us you are a sourcing agent or buying office — we will build the walkthrough around the brand’s categories and your role in its supply chain. If you expect to make introductions regularly, ask us about partnering when you get in touch.
Do you publish the names of companies that use RetailNorthstar?
No — as a policy, RetailNorthstar does not publish customer names, logos, or attributed quotes, in any category. That covers agents, buying offices, and factories as much as brands. In an agency business, which brands you serve and which factories you place orders with is competitively sensitive — we treat it that way.
One order book across every brand and every factory.
See how an agent or buying office runs POs, WIP, and delivery analytics on RetailNorthstar — and what changes when a brand client is on it too.
Connected merchandise planning — live in weeks, not quarters.