The Role of Tech in Collection Planning // Where to Start and What Common Pitfalls to Avoid

Assessing Collection Issues

If your last collection didn’t perform as well as you'd hoped, it might be tempting to blame your collection planning process. But before jumping to conclusions, it’s worth working backward to see if the execution may have been flawed.

Here are a few areas to explore:

Once you've ruled out these potential execution issues, it’s time to evaluate the collection planning process itself. Is it aligned with current consumer demand trends? Is your data guiding the right decisions? If there’s a misalignment, it’s an opportunity to revisit your strategy and fine-tune it for future collections.

Measuring Collection Success

Most fashion retailers judge a collection’s success based on key performance indicators (KPIs) such as sell-through rates and full-price sales. While these metrics are important, they provide only a post-launch assessment of performance, offering little in the way of predicting future success.

If you want to get a more comprehensive view of a collection’s success before the season ends, here are some additional KPIs to consider:

These KPIs are still just a starting point. They give you a snapshot of what happened, but to improve future collections, you need to dig deeper into the collection planning process and ensure it aligns with consumer demand, fashion trends, and market conditions.

Enabling Collection Planning with Technology

Collection planning is a holistic process that combines creativity with commercial viability. It requires input from multiple teams across your business, from creative designers to strategic planners, and involves both top-down and bottom-up decision-making.

Process Structure
The heart of collection planning lies in finding a balance between strategic goals and creative expression. Retailers often struggle to marry top-down planning (e.g., sales targets, merchandise goals, pricing strategies) with the more fluid, bottom-up creative processes (e.g., design trends, fabric choices).

Here’s the challenge:

• The top-down approach focuses on commercial goals—what are the sales targets, where is the brand positioned in the market, and what price points will resonate with your audience?
• The bottom-up approach is led by creativity—what’s on-trend, what will inspire customers, and what new designs will push the brand forward?

When these two perspectives don’t communicate effectively, you can end up with a collection that is either commercially viable but uninspiring or creative but unprofitable. The solution? Streamlining these processes so that strategic and creative teams work more cohesively. This often requires better communication, clear objectives, and shared data.


Tech Integration
If your internal culture and organisational structure are set for cross-functional collaboration, then you might want to integrate technology into your planning processes.

For many retailers, collection planning is still done through outdated methods, often relying on spreadsheets that require manual input. This can create unnecessary delays, errors, and blind spots. It also makes it harder to adapt to shifting market conditions quickly.

By integrating technology into your collection planning process, you can streamline workflows and make better decisions based on real-time data.

Here’s how tech can help:

• Data Accessibility: Making high-quality data accessible to the entire team—from designers to merchandisers—ensures that everyone is working from the same playbook. Tools like Plytix and Centric PLM allow teams to centralise data and ensure seamless collaboration across departments.

• Forecasting: With access to predictive analytics and demand forecasting, you can better anticipate consumer preferences and ensure your collection resonates with the market. Solutions like RetailNext and StyleSage provide advanced forecasting tools that help retailers stay ahead of market trends.

• Market & Trend Analysis: Tools like trend forecasting platforms or competitor analysis software can bring in external data to refine your collection planning even further. WGSN, Edited and Enstyle provide trend analysis and competitor insights that can be easily integrated into your planning process.

By embracing technology, fashion retailers can make smarter, faster, and more data-driven decisions throughout the collection planning process, significantly reducing the risk of launching an underperforming collection.

Smart Data
In pursuit of internal adoption of new technologies in your business, data quality can be another challenge to prepare for. Quality data is smart data. It provides the insights needed to make informed decisions that directly impact collection performance.

Smart data is characterised by the following:

1. Analytics & forecasting: Predict future trends based on past performance and emerging market signals.
2. High-quality, clean data: Inaccurate or incomplete data leads to flawed decision-making. Invest in data quality to avoid costly mistakes.
3. External data sources: Look beyond your internal databases. Integrate third-party tools, like trend forecasters or market analysis platforms, to ensure you’re on top of evolving consumer preferences.
4. Accessibility: Ensure that all key stakeholders can access the data they need when they need it.

The journey to smart data isn’t always easy, but it’s essential for optimising collection planning. When your decisions are grounded in the right data, you can confidently align your collections with both consumer demand and strategic goals.