Reforecast

A reforecast is not a re-plan. The pre-season plan is a commitment — to receipts, to a markdown budget, to a margin the season promised — and it is frozen before the first reforecast so that the season can always be measured against it. Each reforecast is a numbered version laid beside that original. The forward shape, the intermediate closing stock targets, the required receipts and the open-to-buy are re-solved every cycle as routine hygiene; the season total changes only when the owner of the total decides it should, with a reason recorded.

The scope is decided before the arithmetic. Sales and markdowns for the remaining periods are re-forecast, usually from a blend of the run-rate to date, its trend, and last year’s shape restated onto this year’s calendar, weighted by how many weeks have traded. Receipts already committed — shipped, past the cancellation point, prebooked with dealers — are held as facts and carried as on-order. The season exit stock is held as policy, because the space and the buying room are needed for the next season regardless of how this one traded. With the exit fixed and the sales lower, the surplus has nowhere to go but fewer receipts or more markdown, which is the honest choice the reforecast exists to force.

The outputs are readings, not answers: which periods are over- or under-bought once commitments are netted against required receipts, what forward cover the revised stock represents against the revised sales, and where forward cover disagrees with trailing weeks of supply. Each reading maps to a lever — chase, cancel, push, re-allocate, markdown or hold — and the levers expire in cost order, cheapest first, which is why a reforecast run early in a season is worth more than three run late in it. The mechanics are worked through, step by step and with a reconciled example, in the in-season reforecast guide.