Latest news & insights

The focus for many buying and merchandising teams, particularly on a Monday morning, is to review and analyse how their product category performed during the previous week. And the ‘go to’ measure is Sales: How much money did we take? Was it in line with forecast? Were we up on last year…? How about versus […]

There is a rhythm and routine to retail as Buying, Planning and Merchandising teams navigate their own retail cycles to plan and trade their product areas. However, the efforts put into planning before a season begins result in the buzz of finding out how your products actually sold, and whether this was in line with how […]

My former life in operational roles was driven by the retail planning calendar. There was a rhythm to the year, the quarter, the month, the week that underpinned everything: Company strategy sharing, Team strategy development, Trips (Inspiration, Market, Sourcing, Booking), Sign Offs, WSSI roll-ups, and Monday morning meetings. There was a core set of activities […]

  In the world of retail, two key roles often come under the spotlight: The Buyer and the Merchandiser. Both play pivotal roles but who is the ultimate decision maker? As an ex-buyer, it’s got to be the buyer, right? As much as I probably spent much of my buying career believing exactly that, maybe I […]

We use the word strategy in multiple contexts in retail, here I’m talking about the transition from Company Strategy to Divisional Strategy to Department Strategy and how those high-level directional views are different from but critical to the Buying and Merchandising Commercial Plan. [toc] Company strategy Strategy defines the direction a company intends to take […]

Most customers love a deal, and lots of retailers have frequent offers across their product ranges. But the process of reducing prices comes at a cost. In fact, the management of the markdown budget is a critical aspect of the merchandiser’s toolkit, it’s a complex topic and it needs to be planned and managed carefully. […]

In mature retailers, commercial finance and merchandising work well together, each applying their skills at the relevant stage of the business calendar and level of the hierarchy to challenge and ratify fiscal expectations and results. Finance and Merchandising are separate and distinct skill sets which approach the business from very different standpoints. Key areas Commercial […]

Put simply stock is needed to be able to make sales, in theory the more stock you have the more sales you can make. Of course the quality of the stock, how wanted it is, what value it represents will have a significant impact on the sales. Connecting the decisions made about stock to the […]

If you’re new to the world of retail and feeling a little lost in the jargon, or maybe you’re just in need of a quick refresher, our jargon-busting series of blogs will have you “Speaking Retail” in no time. Other articles in the series cover common acronyms and terms relating to measuring and managing stock, […]

We often meet retailers who have poorly organised data, whose product is grouped together based on their organisational structure or in a supplier facing way. It is often a mix of attributes and hierarchy; and is rarely consistent.   This lack of structure is holding their business back; it is limiting visibility which means it is […]

Assortment or Range planning is the majority of a buying and merchandising team’s purpose. All of the other work done is related to building the range for the next phase, the next season, the next year.   From strategy to trading, from WSSI to supplier relationships, from competitor shopping to catwalks – it’s all ultimately about […]

The latest in our series of Retail Careers Interviews sees us talk to Victoria Ward, our strategic transformation consultant, who shares her journey from Merchandising to Consultancy at First Friday. Retail Careers: An Interview with Victoria Ward First Friday’s team all have strong roots in Retail. Tell us about yours: I began my career some […]

This is the first in a new series of interviews where we explore the careers of our talented retail, change management and training consultants. First up, we hear from Head of Systems Transformation Training, Jean Spencer, who shares with us how she first found her way into retail, some of her earliest memories, and why […]

With my experience in buying, merchandising and planning, I am often asked to help retailers improve their Assortment Planning. From the CEO to the most junior member of the team there is an opinion on the assortment or range in store/online today; what there is too much of, what there is too little of, what […]

  Aware of the recent negative media coverage of a number of businesses, here at First Friday we saw a real need to invest in supporting organisations with high-quality, engaging training around Equality, Diversity and Inclusion. As a business, we specialise in the provision of training solutions, but we’re not subject matter experts in this […]

Maybe you have just started your career in merchandising or planning, or perhaps you are a training manager wanting to know more about the role so you can put together a training programme. In either case, you need to start by understanding the roles and responsibilities of merchandisers and planners. Let’s begin by explaining the […]

When people say they are a Buyer, or they want a career in buying, most of us have a picture of what that might mean. They are the people who buy the products that we in turn, as customers, buy from retail shops and websites. Simple, right? But is it..? The reality is that beyond […]

When it comes to business systems, most organisations will ask themselves the question of whether to choose between a standard ‘vanilla’ system or a custom build – and software vendors can readily describe the pros and cons of each. But what about training?  Does the same choice exist, and how and when do you know […]

Essential merchandising processes, tools and skills for retailers Retail has always been an incredibly vibrant and exciting sector to work in. It has always been fast-moving and ever-changing as it has had to evolve to meet the evolving consumer and competitive environment. But boy, things have changed a lot in the last couple of years: […]

The WSSI (Weekly Stock Sales and Intake) is the engine that powers the decision making of Buying, Planning and Trading teams. Installing a new engine – while keeping the business running – might seem a daunting task, but, done right, it could transform your business.  You may not have a WSSI system to speak of, […]

You may not currently have a WSSI, and, having survived without, you may wonder what all the fuss is about. Or you may be wondering why you’re under pressure from your team to replace that old Excel WSSI which has been around for years… But if you’re a retailer who needs to manage the risky […]

There is an old joke that when asking someone for directions the response is “but if I wanted to get there I wouldn’t start from here”. Planning 2021 is going to feel very much like that, I suspect. This year is going to be a heck of a place to plan from. We’ve always had […]

Having been involved in many transformation and change projects over the years I wanted to share some of my experience of what I’ve learnt actually makes change not just successful, but sustainable too. So over a series of 4 posts, I’m going to share my experience about the approach I’ve seen work in the real […]

Delivering sustainable change requires a number of steps to work together. Last time I talked about the importance of agreeing and sharing the vision for the future. I discussed how critical it is to place your people at the heart of the change and support them to develop the vision into more tangible steps. In […]