CASE STUDIES
COMMERCIAL PROCESS IMPROVEMENT - NATIONAL RETAILER - JJB Sports
Objective: Improve strategic and operational processes in Buying and Merchandising.
Solution: Interim role as Commercial Process Manager. Developing and implementing processes that improved
commercial performance and operational efficiency. Supporting the Trading Director in analysis, project
management and leadership tasks. Four key projects were delivered.
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Range Optimisation. After detailed analysis of category sales performance, the option count was reduced by 30% to make the range more efficient, enabling improved sell through with stock spending being better focused on key lines.
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New Critical Path and Range Planning Process, with additional stages including Strategy Planning. Defining required inputs and outputs for each stage. Instilling discipline ensured on time delivery of key stages and brought a sharper focus to range building.
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New Range Planning Tool. Automated functions for ease of use and improved data integrity. Automated 'analysis' area to aid the buyers in planning an optimal range with option count and financial metrics.
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Range Data Upload Application. Importing and validating style data and purchase orders from the range plan straight in to the main system. This Improved data integrity and reduced input time by 75%, releasing several weeks a year back to the buying teams.
“Richard went into JJB Sports at a time when colleagues were stretched by well-publicised previous corporate problems. His work on making the options and range-planning process more efficient was greatly appreciated by co-workers and was very much welcomed by those of us in Finance, as it brought significantly improved use of the company's cash resources.”
Dave Sherman, Commercial Accountant
“Even though Richard was only at JJB for a short period of time his impact on the day to day running of the business was huge. He came in at a very difficult time but his can do attitude and willingness to role his sleeves up and get stuck in was refreshing.”
Steve Harrison, Senior Merchandiser.
RESEARCH AND SCOPING STUDY FOR THE DEVELOPMENT OF A SWIMWEAR BRAND
Objective: Investigate the UK swimwear market and report on the viability, approach and target segment to support the
client’s decision on a potential investment to develop a brand.
Solution: Desk based research project. Delivery of a comprehensive report with recommendations.
The client was very strong in design, development and sourcing of swim products and had supplied them into the high street for many years. They had little experience with brands, but recognised that this could be a way to add sales growth and real value to their business. Exploring a wide range of options with them, nine potential market segments were identified for research.
New research undertaken, previous knowledge and industry reports were used to build a clear picture of the UK swimwear market. This enabled the identification of viable opportunities that had the potential to be targeted. From the initial list of nine, three were studied in detail. One segment was then recommended. The report concluded that there was opportunity in the market and when coupled with the client’s excellent design, manufacturing and supply capabilities, the recommendation was to progress the project with investment in a brand.
The client went on to acquire and relaunch a brand in the UK market.
BUSINESS, STRATEGY AND PROCESS REVIEW; PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT SUPPORT
FOR A TWO YEAR OLD MOUNTAIN CLOTHING BRAND
Objective: Help the Managing Director look at ways of moving the business forward. Develop additional products to
increase sales and brand awareness.
Solution: Reviewing Strategy and Operational Process with Managing Director / Co-Owner.
This two year old clothing brand faced several challenges, common to many start-ups, on how to move forward and achieve sustainable growth. Several areas were looked at.
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Operational process was reviewed and recommendations made on increasing efficiency. As with most young businesses there are a lot of tasks that need doing and not enough resource.
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Research was carried out looking in to adjacent market segments that had potential for the brand to enter. The decision was made to not fully enter any of these markets at this time, but to develop additional product variants that would lay a careful path from the core use towards one of the segments.
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Carried out the development of accessories products making sure they met with brand values and design hand writing. The brand was selling one core product in several colourways. It needed to add new products to the range in order to grow the customer base and encourage repeat purchases from existing customers.
FIELD RESEARCH – GREETING CARDS - MORRISONS ON BEHALF ANOTHER CONSULTANCY
Objective: Gain insight in to competitor ranging of Greeting Cards
Solution: Field Research project, analysis and reporting
Data collected on size of range offered and store space used broken down by key segments, e.g. Birthdays, Birthdays with ages, Humour, Wedding, etc. The survey was conducted in several retailers including a high street card specialist, department store and super markets. The raw data was collated in to a presentable format, analysed and commentary added to summarise findings.
CRITICAL PATH AND BUYING PROCESS DEVELOPMENT - GLOBAL LIFESTYLE BRAND - Superdry
Objective: Deliver cost reduction and operational efficiencies by improving product development and buying processes.
Solution: Twelve month contract as part of the Business Transformation Team working on the ‘Design to Customer’ programme that focused on the complete product cycle from planning and design to buying and production. Providing SME support on a variety of commercial performance and operational efficiency topics. Two key projects were delivered.
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Critical Path - Development and implementation.
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The overall time line was redesigned to balance the needs of all departments and minimise conflicts between overlapping seasons. Formats for key meetings were developed and carefully implemented with the business teams.
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The existing high-level process was very siloed resulting in downstream range selections being highly pressured and often late. Additional planning and update stages were added to move decision making upstream. This helped smooth the end of the cycle and launch stronger, more focused product ranges on time.
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The new critical path was bedding in well and is underpinning several other key change initiatives.
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Buying Process – Review and Development. Under existing process, the Retail and Wholesale divisions bought separately. This prohibited opportunities to gain better pricing though higher volumes and often led to capacity planning challenges with suppliers. A new Joint Buying plan was developed to ensure that demand information was consolidated, reviewed and actioned as one team. A number of opportunities were identified to optimise purchasing, cost price and stock balancing that could be applied to different product options as required
“Rich spent a year working for me at Superdry, helping to transform and embed new processes covering the full product planning and development cycle. Rich designed a new critical path that met the varying needs of our retail and wholesale channels and helped to drive improved collaboration across all of the team involved. Rich is a great person to work with and his extensive experience in this area meant that he was a well respected member of the team. He engaged with senior stakeholders across the business effectively to come up with pragmatic solutions that ultimately will help us deliver significant sales increases and costs savings."
Scott Robertson, Head of Business Transformation