“ Climate change is a central challenge for the retail industry that has pushed brands to incorporate sustainable retailing practices to achieve net-zero carbon emissions. Technology-driven solutions can accelerate the transition to a healthy, resilient and sustainable future by building a decarbonization pathway, across the supply chain, and helping brands win the Race to Zero. ”
Inventory, even though a valuable business asset, can be potentially damaging if not managed efficiently. According to a recent post by the World Economic Forum, the fashion industry is one of the world’s most polluting industries; producing one-tenth of global carbon emissions and nearly a fifth of wastewater with a truck full of unsold inventory burned or dumped every second.
Fashion production makes up 10% of humanity’s carbon emissions, dries up water sources, and pollutes rivers and streams.
What’s more, 85% of all textiles go to the dump each year. And washing some types of clothes sends thousands of bits of plastic into the ocean.
Fashion trends are dynamic and difficult to predict, hence planning inventory months in advance is challenging leading to overstocking or underbuying. Unsold inventory ends in landfills, adding to the environmental damage to water, air, and land pollution.
Increff’s smart merchandising solution is an algorithm-driven platform that helps in:
Accurate assortment planning Assessing True ROS by analyzing data as latest as of yesterday’s sales, revenue, discounts, size-cuts, stock-outs, etc., and style trends at individual store level.
Creating a buy plan Considering the demand, depletion, returns, factors like lead time, and MOQ to determine the opening inventory at the start of the OTB period.
Inaccurate allocation of inventory, with regards to customer demand, results in overstocking or understocking, delayed order fulfillment, and high shipping costs. Unnecessary transportation of finished goods adds to air pollution and damages the goods making them unfit for usage.
Increff SaaS merchandising solution helps in:
Optimum demand-wise store allocation Generate dynamic store-style ranking by conducting fresh season and event-based size-wise demand analysis.
Automating replenishment and replacement based on existing sales.
Intelligently distributing inventory across a network of warehouses based on regional demand for faster e-commerce order fulfillment.
Inaccurate inventory tracking and unnecessary space utilization due to overstocking leads to inefficient resources utilization, capital expenditure, and wastage or decay.
Increff’s cloud-based, SaaS solutions help in:
Efficient management of limited shelf life products with FEFO (First Expiry First Out) distribution technique.
Preventing mismanagement with inventory serialization for 100% tracking accuracy.
Optimum resource utilization by providing just-in-time inventory management at the store, warehouse, or distribution centers for addressing demand as it arises.
Inability to expose 100% stock limits chances of sales. Failure to sell stock at regular prices pushes retailers to either excessively discount their stuck working capital or dump the unsold inventory to landfills.
Increff’s smart merchandising and new-age warehousing solution allows:
Real-time inventory order sync to reduce order cancellations due to over-booking during regular and peak-sales time.
100% inventory exposure across all sales channels, simultaneously, to increase visibility.
Inter-store transfers to improve inventory health by correcting broken sizes and reallocating styles to the most optimum stores for higher sales.
Return and resale increase transportation and usage of repackaging material. Delay in returns processing results in product spoilage and decay, leading to dumping of inventory into landfills, and release of harmful chemicals in the environment.
Increff Returns Management, our omnichannel SaaS-based solution for efficient re-commerce:
Increases return visibility to prevent mismanagement.
Achieves 100% traceability so planning of new merchandise can be done considering what’s already in stock.
Facilitates effective categorization of returned items into refurbishable, rejected, and resaleable, to optimize disposition for recovering value and reducing the volume of products going into landfills.
~20% reduction in inventory holdings, keeping the revenue and profits the same. Unnecessary fabric consumption and production optimization help minimize industrial waste that can cause breathing issues, generate genetic deformities in newborns and lead to depletion of the Ozone layer.
~ 2.1M miles saved in logistics and ~ 20% increase in regional fulfillment. By intelligently placing inventory closer to consumers retailers can facilitate faster order fulfillment, lower-order cancellation, and lesser returns, thus reducing logistics miles.
Prevention of wastage and spoilage of expirable inventory minimizes dumping.
Prevent dead inventory from lying in the warehouse and also eliminate the need for buffer stock.
Fulfillment from the local warehouse reduces environmental impact, facilitates faster deliveries, lowers returns or order cancellations due to delay, and boosts customer satisfaction.
Returns data can be used for making valuable merchandising decisions related to product quality, shopper preference (product/ store), vendor performance, etc, providing more opportunities for sustainable retailing.
Rapid re-commerce through instant re-listing of quality passed goods on sales channels prevents wastage and promotes sales.
Strategically locating returns-processing reduces road miles and cuts carbon emissions.
Demand-wise inventory distribution helps in the conservation of resources such as land, manpower, and electricity to improve operational efficiency.
Limit product wastage and decay by redistributing inventory as per customer demand, between stores and warehouses
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