A chase is a reorder placed while a style is still selling well — the upside half of in-season management, where you press into demand instead of clearing a mistake. The problem is timing: by the time a winner is obvious to everyone, the lead time to make more has usually already closed the window. Reading the signal early is the whole game.
Read full-price sell-through, not total
The first weeks of a style’s life carry most of the information. A high full-price sell-through early — before any promotion — is the cleanest chase signal there is. Total sell-through that includes markdown units muddies it, because it counts demand you bought at a discount. Track the two separately and the early winners separate themselves quickly.
Pair sell-through with forward weeks-of-cover: a style selling fast with cover falling toward two or three weeks is both a winner and a stock-out risk — exactly the profile a chase exists for.
The lead time is the deadline
A chase is only real if the goods can land while the style is still selling at full price. That makes the supplier lead time the true deadline for the decision, not the season calendar. If a reorder takes ten weeks to arrive and the style has eight weeks of full-price life left, the chase is already off the table — however good the sell-through looks.
This is why the chase decision has to be made against lead time and in-transit reality, not against a hope that the goods show up soon.
Plan the chase before the season — the reserve
The teams that chase well do not find the money mid-season; they hold it back on purpose. Reserving a portion of the open-to-buy as a chase reserve — left uncommitted at the start of the season — is what makes a fast reorder possible without blowing the plan. Without a reserve, every chase is a fight for budget that is already spent.
How much to hold depends on category volatility and lead time, but the principle is fixed: a chase you did not budget for is a chase you usually cannot place in time.
Chase to the size curve
A reorder placed as an even pack repeats the same size mistake at a larger scale. The chase should follow the same size curve the style is actually selling — heavy in the core, light at the ends — so the reorder lands as sellable units, not as a fresh markdown waiting to happen.