📌 At a glance: Across 41 like-for-like stores, a leading women's fashion retailer grew revenue per day per store by 15.3%, improved top-seller availability by 8.1%, cut discounting by 2.1 percentage points, and grew total revenue 14.4% year on year.
What Is This Case Study About?
This case study looks at what changed across the retailer's store network over two comparable years: August 2024–July 2025 before the Increff merchandising program matured, and August 2025–July 2026 after. The comparison is run on 41 like-for-like stores, so store count and store mix don't distort the picture.
The gains show up in store productivity. Each store earned more from every trading day, the fastest-moving styles stayed on the shelf far more consistently, and less stock needed a discount to move.
Client Overview
- Industry: Women's Fashion Retail
- Retail Format: Own and partner stores across North, South, East and West India
- Focus Area: How often stores are replenished, inter-store transfers (IST), top-seller availability, assortment width
- Key Challenge: Keeping the fastest-selling styles in stock as revenue concentrated into a smaller set of winners, while the live assortment kept growing
- Analysis Basis: Aug '24–Jul '25 (pre) vs Aug '25–Jul '26 (post), 41 L2L stores
Challenges Faced: Revenue Concentrates Faster Than Replenishment Can Keep Up
Fashion retail rewards the few styles customers actually want. The operational problem is that those styles change every season, and manual replenishment usually finds them late.
- Rising dependence on a small set of styles: The top 10% of styles were already carrying 31.3% of revenue, and the share was climbing. Every stockout on that list cost disproportionately more than a stockout anywhere else.
- Availability gaps on the styles that mattered most: Without replenishment and transfers timed to how fast each style was actually selling, best sellers ran dry in the stores selling them fastest while sitting idle elsewhere.
- A widening assortment to manage: Live styles grew from 1,115 to 1,647 over the comparison period, a 48% increase in choice that stores and planners had to cover with the same attention.
- Discount dependence: Slow-moving depth in the wrong stores pushed teams toward markdowns to clear stock.
- Uneven regional maturity: North carried nearly half of network revenue while South operated at a fraction of the scale, with no clear read on which region had headroom.
Increff's Approach: Replenish Against Rate of Sale
Increff's Merchandising Suite made the retailer's allocation, replenishment and inter-store transfer calls using each store's current rate of sale (ROS), instead of planner judgement or last season's numbers.
👉 Ready to keep your best sellers on the shelf, like this retailer? Explore Increff's Allocation & Replenishment software
Top-Seller Protection as the Core Rule
- The top 10% of styles by revenue were re-identified through the year, not fixed at the start of a season
- Replenishment and transfer recommendations covered these styles first, before the rest of the stock was spread out
- Availability on this set improved 8.1% across the comparison period, at the point these styles mattered most to revenue
Replenishing More Often, Store by Store
- How often a store was replenished depended on its own ROS, not one schedule applied to the whole network
- Inter-store transfers moved stock from stores where a style was sitting idle to stores where it was selling, before a markdown became the only option
- How much stock each store held was decided store by store, not split evenly across the chain
Managing a 48% Wider Assortment
- With live styles growing from 1,115 to 1,647, the recommendations had to tell genuinely new styles apart from ones that were simply not selling
- New styles were given time to build a sales record before being measured against older ones
- Planners worked from a ranked list of what to move and where, instead of reviewing the full catalogue store by store
Results: Stronger Store Productivity, Less Discounting
Revenue per day per store grew 15.3% while discounting fell. The growth came from having the right stock in the right store, and selling more of it at full price.
Why Increff for Retail Replenishment and Allocation
- Top-seller protection built into the logic: the styles carrying disproportionate revenue are replenished first, not averaged into general depth
- Store-by-store timing: how often a store is replenished follows its own rate of sale, not one schedule for the whole network
- Inter-store transfers before markdowns: idle stock moves to stores where it sells, protecting margin
- Built for a growing assortment: new styles get time to build a sales record instead of being judged against older ones
- Like-for-like measurement: results reported on a comparable store base so the uplift is attributable, not inflated by network growth
Ready to Make Every Store Day Count?
If your best-selling styles are still going out of stock while slower stock sits elsewhere in the network, Increff's replenishment and inter-store transfer recommendations can close that gap.
👉 Book a demo with Increff and see what ROS-based replenishment looks like for your store network.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)
What is merchandising software?
Merchandising software decides what inventory goes where. It plans the assortment, allocates stock to stores at the start of a season, replenishes it as sales come in, and moves stock between stores when demand shifts. The aim is to hold the right depth of the right styles in each store, instead of spreading inventory evenly and hoping it sells.
How is automated replenishment different from manual replenishment?
Manual replenishment relies on a planner reviewing stores and styles on a fixed schedule, usually working from last season's norms and a spreadsheet. Automated replenishment reads live rate of sale at each store and generates a ranked list of what to send where. The practical difference is speed: a planner can cover a few hundred decisions a week, while the system covers every store and style continuously.
What is top-seller availability and why does it matter?
Top-seller availability measures how consistently the best-performing styles are in stock at store level. It matters because revenue in fashion retail concentrates heavily: the top 10% of styles often drive 30 to 45% of sales. A stockout on that list costs several times more than a stockout on an average style.
What is an inter-store transfer, and when should a retailer use one?
An inter-store transfer (IST) moves stock from a store where it isn't selling to one where it is, without routing it back through the warehouse. It's worth doing when a style is clearly working in some locations and sitting idle in others. Acting early protects margin, because the alternative is usually a markdown.
How can retailers reduce discounting without losing sales?
Most discounting happens because the wrong stock ended up in the wrong store. Fixing availability on high-demand styles and moving idle stock to where it sells removes a large part of the reason to mark down. Markdown then becomes a planned clearance tool rather than the default way to hit a sales number.
Why is like-for-like measurement used in retail case studies?
A like-for-like comparison includes only stores trading in both periods, so new openings and closures don't inflate the result. Without it, a retailer that simply opened more stores would appear to have improved when nothing changed at store level.