// Research
Apparel Planning
Research & Data.
Original research on apparel planning practices, team structures, and the tools that mid-market brands use to manage OTB, assortment, and buy planning.
// Published
Published research
Industry Research
The Modern Apparel Planning Stack
A technology landscape analysis for mid-market apparel brands — what the modern planning stack looks like, how the tools fit together, what each category does well, and where the gaps remain.
8 min read
Industry Research
Spreadsheet Dependency in Apparel Planning: A Risk Analysis
A structured analysis of the operational, financial, and strategic risks of managing apparel merchandising planning in spreadsheets — quantifying the cost and identifying the threshold at which the risk exceeds the cost of migration.
8 min read
Industry Research
State of Apparel Merchandising Planning 2026
An analysis of how mid-market apparel brands are currently planning — what tools they use, where planning breaks down, and what separates high-performing planning operations from the rest.
7 min read
Industry Research
Why Apparel Brands Overbuy: The Structural Causes of Excess Inventory
An analysis of the five structural drivers that cause apparel brands to chronically overbuy — asymmetric penalties, cascading buffers, disconnected carry-forward, MOQ capitulation, and optimism bias — and the system-level changes required to break the cycle.
8 min read
Industry Research
Apparel Buying Team Structure at Mid-Market Brands
How apparel buying teams are organized at $10M–$200M brands — roles, handoffs, tools, and what high-performing teams do differently across the planning-to-buy workflow.
10 min read
Industry Research
SKU Rationalization in Apparel: From Accumulation to Intentional Assortments
A strategic analysis of SKU proliferation in apparel merchandising — why assortments grow unchecked, the hidden costs of complexity, and the frameworks that enable productive rationalization without sacrificing customer choice or brand identity.
9 min read
Industry Research
OTB Planning Benchmarks for Mid-Market Apparel Brands
How mid-market apparel brands set, manage, and miss open-to-buy budgets — benchmarks across planning cycle length, revision frequency, OTB accuracy, and the operational patterns that separate high-performing planning teams from the rest.
10 min read
Industry Research
Apparel Planning Maturity Benchmarks: Where Most Teams Sit and What Separates the Top 20%
A benchmark analysis of planning maturity across mid-market apparel brands — mapping the five levels from spreadsheet-dependent to intelligent merchandising, with data on planning speed, data-to-decision ratios, and the operational patterns that predict which level a team actually operates at.
10 min read
Industry Research
Markdown and Inventory Risk in Apparel Planning
How mid-market apparel brands quantify and reduce markdown exposure — analysis of inventory risk drivers, sell-through target benchmarks, and the planning failure points that generate the most preventable markdown.
11 min read
Industry Research
Assortment Planning Practices at Mid-Market Apparel Brands
How brands in the $10M–$200M revenue range structure assortment decisions — by category, channel, and season — and where spreadsheet-based assortment planning breaks down as the business grows.
10 min read
Industry Research
Inventory Productivity Benchmarks for Apparel Brands
How top-performing apparel brands generate 20–30% more revenue per unit of inventory invested — benchmarks across GMROI, inventory turns, weeks of supply, and the operational patterns that separate capital-efficient merchandising from volume-driven buying.
10 min read
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