Merchandise Plan

The plan is a chain of derivations rather than a list of targets. Planned sales come first; a stock-to-sales ratio or forward-cover target turns them into the stock each period should open and close with; the identity then solves receipts — planned receipts = planned sales + planned markdowns + planned EOP − planned BOP — and receipts less what is already on order is the open-to-buy. Change one line and every later period moves, which is why the plan is built in period order and why a typed receipt figure is a hidden assumption about one of the other lines. Margin runs alongside: the markup on receipts and the markdown budget set the gross margin the plan is promising, and the stock targets set the inventory needed to earn it — so every merchandise plan already implies a GMROI before a unit is bought.

It is distinct from the plans beneath it. The merchandise plan decides how much, in dollars, by period and category; the line plan decides what the range will be; the assortment plan decides where the range goes and in what depth; the buy plan commits units to vendors. Open-to-buy is the control that keeps the buy inside the merchandise plan, and the WSSI is the same identity traded weekly. The plan is built twice — top-down from last year restated onto this year’s calendar, bottom-up from categories, channels and doors — and reconciled into one number before it drives anything.

In-season, the plan is frozen as the yardstick and reforecast beside it: actuals replace plan for closed periods, the balance of the season is re-projected, and receipts and open-to-buy are re-solved, while the season total changes only as an owned decision. The structure is the same in every vertical; the grain and the calendar change — style-color and season in apparel, size runs and prebooks in footwear, colorways and the evergreen core in accessories, container quantities and ocean lead times in home and furniture, model years and dealer prebooks in outdoor and sporting goods, launches and shelf life in beauty and wellness, Q4 concentration in toys and games, registry demand and model-year changeovers in baby and juvenile, and piece-level inventory in jewelry and watches.