Aligning Top-Down Financial Plans with Bottom-Up Item Plans in Apparel
The most common planning failure in growing apparel brands: the financial plan says one thing, the assortment plan says another, and nobody reconciles them until it's too late. This guide shows how to align top-down revenue targets with bottom-up style-level planning.
The misalignment that costs millions
Top-down planning starts with financial targets: revenue by period, margin goals, and OTB budgets. Bottom-up planning starts with product decisions: which styles, how many units, what price points, what delivery dates.
In a well-run planning process, these two approaches converge — the sum of all bottom-up product decisions fits within the top-down financial framework. In reality, they almost never do on the first pass.
The CEO targets $8M for the season. The planner builds an OTB budget of $3.2M in receipt cost to support that target at 60% margin. The buying team builds style-level plans that total $3.9M in receipt cost — 22% over budget. Nobody catches the gap until the orders are placed. The result: overbuying, cash strain, and excess inventory.
This is the single most common planning failure in apparel brands between $2M and $50M in revenue.
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