The Next-Generation Commerce Stack

Retail and its supporting tech landscape have undergone a massive transformation over the past decade, which was only accelerated by the recent pandemic. What sets leading retailers apart is their adoption of modern technology across the entire business. In this post, we talk about the key differentiators of modern commerce technology and the combination of solutions that make up the tech stack used by the industry's most innovative, high-growth retailers.

Toolio Helps Verishop Stay Nimble Amid Rapid Growth & Changing Retail Landscape

Verishop is an industry leader when it comes to building and leveraging technology within retail. Verishop needed a solution that could help them scale their planning processes, improve visibility and increase inventory planning & management accuracy. Today, with the support of the Toolio Merchandising Platform, Verishop has the ability to plan and forecast at the most granular levels and quickly react to change by leveraging real-time data and insights.

How to Calculate Size Curves + Free Size Curve Generator Template

Size curves, also known as size breaks, define the ideal ratio between different sizes of a Color Choice or a Style. This post covers how to calculate the optimal size curve for a given product and walks you through how to use our free Size Curve Generator Template.

How to Calculate Weeks of Supply and Set Target Levels

Weeks of Supply, also known as WOS, is a key performance indicator (KPI) that all retailers should be watching closely to understand the health of their inventory. This article covers how to use WOS and the different ways of calculating it.

Toolio Product Update: Seeding from the Past

When you are building a new Merchandise Plan in Toolio, Seeding allows you to populate your current plan with historical data or a plan from the past in order to jump-start your plan creation process. By seeding from the past, you can save time and easily inherit historical seasonality curves, product mixes and important ratios like Markdown % and Return %.

Toolio Product Update: Scenario Playing

Toolio's Scenario Playing feature serves two main purposes: planning for multiple scenarios at the same time and snapshotting old plans to access them later in time. With Excel, this would require you to have duplicate plan spreadsheets or have multiple plan versions (such as original plan, working plan, last forecast, etc.) all living in separate worksheets. See more details on how to use it within this post!

Google Sheet Scripts for Merchandising

We’ve written a handful of Google Sheet Scripts to give us additional custom formulas that help with many crtical merchandising workflows. Check out this post for a list of custom formulas, along with links to our public Google Sheet that demonstrate the extended capability.

Difference Between Initial Markup (IMU) and Maintained Markup (MMU)

This post covers the difference between Initial Markup (IMU) and Maintained Markup (MMU).

Navigating the New Normal: A Guide for Merchants and Planners

Looking back at our Post-Covid predictions and the strategies we’ve observed from our customers, we believe retailers, and more specifically, merchandising organizations, should focus on these five actions to build more resilience and emerge as leaders in the next-generation of retail.

How to Use Excel for Item Planning and Replenishment: Free Template + Guide

Step by step guide on how to use the Toolio Item Planning template to better manage your core items and ensure they never go out of stock.

The Retail Calendar for Better Merchandising and Sales Reporting: Free Tool + Guide

Click here to get the most up to date free retail calendar and a guide on how to best use it to accurately compare your sales data.

Post-Covid Prediction 5: The leaner, distributed, and more productive workforce

Organizations will need to break old paradigms to make way for a new wave of workforce transformation. In order to survive, retailers will need to figure out a way to do more with less, remotely. Winning companies will look to technology to support better information sharing and collaboration among remote teams and automate wherever they can to maintain productivity with a leaner workforce.

Post-Covid Prediction 4: Moving beyond DTC

Distribution strategies will remain in flux for the months and years to come, but when the dust settles, brands will have more control over distribution channels and points of sale will proliferate. Wholesale will morph into new formats such as leased spaces and online marketplaces, which will allow brands to get closer to their customers.

Post-Covid Prediction 3: The resilient supply chain - Lean, diversified and redundant

After the pandemic, supply chains will not only be optimized for cost, but also stability, flexibility and speed. Retailers will prioritize having a diversified production network, reduced inventory levels and more redundant fulfillment mechanisms.

Post-Covid Prediction 2: The Rise of Seasonless Assortments

Post Covid-19, the winning brands and retailers will break out of the vicious markdown cycle with a larger base of timeless products complemented with smaller, carefully planned and timely introduced collections.

Post-Covid Prediction 1: Retailers will leverage technology to overcome planning complexities

Toolio’s first prediction about the retail landscape post Covid-19 looks at the increasingly complex planning environment retailers will face and explains why they will need to embrace technology to manage this.

5 Predictions for the Post-Covid Retail Landscape

How will the retail landscape look post-Covid? Toolio’s 5 predictions point to retail trends we can expect to see.

How to Use Excel for Merchandise Financial Planning: Free Template + Guide

Step by step instructions on how to use the Toolio merchandise financial planning and open to buy template.

A Guide to Effective Merchandise Financial Planning

In this guide, we break down the main steps you should be taking to create an effective merchandise financial plan.

Fundamental Retail Math Formulas

This is a list of the most important retail math formulas that everyone in the industry should know and track in order to evaluate performance.

Retail Terms Every Modern Retailer Should Know

These are the most up-to-date retail terms and definitions that everyone in the industry should know.