How the right data and tools help retailers hone their assortments

However, for these strategies to be effective, retailers need clear visibility into their inventories. The right tools can give you clear, accurate, and real-time data and insights, letting you know how and when your inventory is selling. Are you frequently experiencing stockouts with certain SKUs? Or are you running into issues with overstock?

When you know what's happening with your inventory at all times, you're better equipped to fine-tune your assortments to stay profitable. These data-informed insights can help you decide which products to keep buying, what price points are working, which items are not getting enough attention, and much more. 

For an even more effective inventory management system, tools that are designed specifically for building assortments are a great option. These tools can help save you money, time, and a lot of headaches, since they assist with streamlining and honing your assortments before making any purchases.

For instance, a tool like NuORDER Assortments allows you to be more proactive with your inventory management. With NuORDER’s visual rollup feature, buyers can easily visualize and sort products across multiple brands. Since you can clearly see what's already in your product lineup, you eliminate the risk of buying duplicate products. Buyers can also search for specific products to identify any merchandising gaps.

With NuORDER Assortments, you can also set financial targets and compare your assortments to those targets as needed to ensure you're staying within the allocated budget for each product. This prevents overbuying or underbuying for any given product.

If your business has multiple stores with many buyers responsible for merchandising, then a platform that allows live collaboration between team members can go a long way in building high-quality assortments. With NuORDER’s shared assortments, changes made by team members are updated in real time, which eliminates unnecessary back and forth and reduces the risk of errors.

Carefully curated assortments are vital for retailer profitability and customer satisfaction. As you build your assortments, the best tools will be those that give you clear visibility into your entire inventory. When you can clearly see the products in your assortments in one place, conduct narrow searches, and make useful comparisons, you can make decisions that will maintain or grow your margins.