In every retail landscape, annual events and trends in buyer behaviors can lead to significant increases in demand during specific seasons, increasing the challenges of fulfillment. The November to December gift-buying months alone can account for up to 20% of a retailer’s sales for the entire year.
While all companies can struggle to navigate inventory, logistics, and supply chain management during these times, seasonal peaks in apparel fulfillment can be particularly complicated to navigate. After all, apparel companies don’t just see an increase in demand around the holidays.
Back-to-school shopping sprees, emerging fashion trends, and even seasonal wardrobe changes can lead to sudden spikes in sales. Delays or errors in the fulfillment process around these peak times can result in lost sales, increased costs, and damaged customer relationships.
Effective fulfillment management during these peaks is not just about coping with increased volume; it’s about optimizing operations to maintain a seamless customer experience. Here are our top tips for improving fulfillment, and navigating seasonal demand.
Understanding Seasonal Peaks in Apparel Fulfillment
Seasonal peaks are periods of high demand for specific products that occur at certain times of the year. Most companies are familiar with rising order volumes and sales around the winter festive period, but peaks in demand can occur at multiple times throughout the year for apparel companies.
Holidays, fashion cycles, and weather changes all have an impact on purchasing behavior. For instance, winter clothing sees a significant increase in demand during the fall and winter months as consumers prepare for colder weather, while summer apparel experiences a surge in late spring and early summer as people seek lighter, warm-weather garments.
Additionally, holiday seasons like Black Friday, Christmas, and back-to-school shopping periods are critical times when demand for various types of apparel skyrockets. Managing these peaks in demand can be complex. On the one hand, increased sales means great things for an apparel company’s profit margins – but this is only true if they can accommodate increased sales.
Many apparel companies struggle to manage inventory systems, attempting to balance the risk of stockouts (which cause missed sales opportunities) against the danger of overstocking. Fulfillment operations also experience significant strain during these periods. A surge in orders requires faster processing times, greater coordination between departments, and robust logistics processes.
Failure to accurately prepare for fluctuations can also lead to problems in the supply chain, with ripple effects that harm customer satisfaction and brand reputation.
Tips for Managing Seasonal Peaks in Apparel Fulfillment
Managing seasonal peaks in apparel fulfillment isn’t easy. Companies that aren’t fully prepared can find themselves struggling with significant delays, errors, and issues meeting customer expectations. The good news is that an effective approach to planning, fulfillment, and inventory management for seasonal demand can have a positive impact on any apparel organization’s growth.
Based on our experience helping brands to enhance their apparel fulfillment strategies, here are our top tips for successfully managing peaks in demand.
Invest in Efficient Inventory Management
Optimizing inventory management for seasonal demand challenges is crucial to ensuring you can continue to increase sales, delight customers, and avoid lost opportunities as demand increases.
The right strategy involves finding a way to fight back against the risk of understocking, while also mitigating the threat of overstocking, which ties up valuable capital and increases storage costs. Apparel companies may leverage strategies like “Just-in-Time” (JIT) inventory management.
JIT stocking techniques reduce waste by ensuring goods are received and used only as needed, minimizing excess stock and associated costs. This approach requires precise coordination with suppliers and efficient logistics but can significantly enhance operational efficiency during peak seasons.
Companies can also prepare for success by leveraging safety stock. Maintaining a reserve of extra inventory (focused on popular and high-selling products), can offer a cushion against unexpected spikes in demand and supply chain disruptions.
Technology can also significantly improve and enhance inventory management technology. Advanced inventory management systems (IMS) and Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) software enable real-time tracking of stock levels, accurate demand forecasting, and automated reordering processes. Integrating technologies such as RFID and barcoding further enhances inventory accuracy and efficiency by streamlining tracking and reducing human error.
Use Seasonal Demand Forecasting Strategies
While predicting the exact number of orders you’ll receive, or which products will be most popular during seasonal spikes in demand is difficult, there are strategies you can use to take a data-driven approach to your apparel fulfillment strategies.
Effective seasonal demand forecasting will ensure you can collaborate with suppliers on inventory, and arrange strategies for quick fulfillment with logistics partners in advance. Accurate forecasting in the apparel industry typically starts with historical data analysis. Examining past sales numbers throughout the years can offer an insight into recurring peaks in purchasing patterns.
Monitoring market trends and conditions, as well as industry trends, can also help you adjust your forecast based on new dynamics. Analytics platforms leveraging statistical algorithms and machine learning can even use historical data and real-time insights to help boost the accuracy of your predictions. For instance, tools like SPSS and SAS are excellent for predicting future trends.
Apparel companies can even take advantage of software suites and solutions like Oracle Demantra, or SAP Integrated Business Planning, for real-time data processing and scenario planning, further refining predictions. While accurate forecasting can be complex, the benefits are substantial.
The more data-driven insights you have, the easier it will be to prevent overstocks and stockouts, reduce holding costs, and ensure inventory levels align with customer demand.
Streamlining Operations with 3PL Providers
Finally, aside from leveraging seasonal demand forecasting, and robust inventory management for seasonal demand changes, working with a third-party logistics (3PL) provider can help streamline your operations. Outsourcing fulfillment processes, such as picking and packaging, and shipping processes to companies with experience navigating seasonal peaks in the apparel industry is powerful.
Expert apparel fulfillment companies, like Relentless Fulfillment offer companies access to a customizable service, adapted to their specific needs. Relentless can offer access to specialized storage and packaging solutions for apparel, enhanced kitting solutions, and logistics expertise.
During peak seasons, when logistical complexities increase and demand surges, working with Relentless Fulfillment means you can access the flexibility you need to handle challenges efficiently. Throughout the year, we can adjust our resources, services, and capacity to meet your needs, helping you to prepare for high-demand periods, such as holiday seasons and sales.
This means you can scale quickly, without having to invest in additional infrastructure on in-house staff. Plus, Relentless Fulfillment’s specialized technology helps you to track inventory levels, align your teams, and streamline order processing.
With real-time tracking and reporting capabilities, you gain visibility into your supply chain and can make informed decisions to address any issues that arise.
Prepare for Seasonal Peaks with Relentless Fulfillment
Handling seasonal peaks in apparel fulfillment can be notoriously complex. With so many factors influencing changes in demand for apparel products, companies need to constantly adapt and evolve to ensure they’re adhering to market demand, and delivering a constant customer experience.
Staying ahead of the competition, and earning the loyalty of your customers, requires a holistic approach to inventory management, advanced demand forecasting, and operational management.
Fortunately, Relentless Fulfillment can help you implement the strategies you need to increase your sales, and reduce risks, throughout the year. We offer the perfect combination of inventory management technology, apparel fulfillment strategies, and expertise to support all types of apparel companies, as they navigate annual spikes in sales.
For a tailored solution to your fulfillment challenges, ready to scale to support any change in market demand, contact Relentless Fulfillment today.
