Toolio Product Updates: December 1, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Filtering for Invalid Cells in Master Data, Custom Fields for NetSuite Item & PO Creation, Updated Views for Master Data Models, Command Bar for Quick Search, Copy Excel/Spreadsheet cells into filter options, Hide/Unhide Columns, and Expanding/Collapsing Groupings. Plus, check out our Partner Spotlight featuring Channel Ape!

Toolio Awarded SOC 2 Type II Data Security Certification

Toolio, a merchandising platform for the next generation of retailers, achieves valuable stamp of approval for Security & Compliance

Toolio Product Updates: November 17, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Equal Spreading for Metrics like Discount % and Markdown %, Change History Summaries, MDQ Profiles, and Push Items from Master Data into Assortment Plan!

How Retail Brands Can & Must Increase Sustainability

Sustainability is a hot topic in fashion and apparel and luckily we have an in-house expert on the topic, Mary Saunders co-founder of For Days. Here she shares her take on why sustainability is important and how brands can improve

Toolio Product Updates: October 5, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Merchandise Plan Forecast, Constrain Sales by Inventory and Ability to sort based on metrics aggregation!

Welcome to the Future: New Toolio Customers Announced

Toolio's incoming class of customers range in products sold and channels sold through, but one thing is the same ... their commitment to investing in innovative ways to beat the competition and provide their customers with what they want, when they want it.

15 Questions to Ask When Considering a New Merchandise Planning Software

If you’re a retailer looking to modernize your operations by embracing merchandise planning software, the tool you choose matters. The right one will help you save time, gain actionable insights and grow your business through better planning, while the wrong one can be a waste of your valuable funds and time. But, how do you know which is which? To help you get started, here are 15 key questions to ask potential vendors. 

What is an Allocation Analyst & Do You Need One?

There are so many roles and responsibilities within the retail world, from planners to merchandisers/buyers, allocators and beyond. They’re all important, but it can be difficult to know which to prioritize, especially when it comes to some of the lesser-known titles. Here, we’ll take a look at the Allocation Analyst position, what it is and whether you need someone to fill it. 

How to Perform a Killer Comp Shop

Competitive (comp) shopping is essential to the life of any retail professional. Whether you’re a merchant, planner, buyer or designer, it’s key you understand your competitor’s assortments, the shopping habits of the customer and much more.

Forecasting Best Practices

A recap of the highlights from our hour-long webinar with our VP of Planning talking all about best practices for forecasting conceptually and in Toolio

What are Pre-packs, Case-packs and Minimum Display Quantities?

There's no shortage of retail terminology nuances. In this post we cover pre-packs, case-packs and MDQs.

Toolio Product Updates: September 7, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Aggregation Capabilities in Master Data, Amazon Fees in Toolio and PDF Exporting Improvements!

Top 5 Excel Memes for Merchandise Planners

Merchandise planning is serious business and that's why we need the levity of memes.

Toolio Product Updates: August 25, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Snapshot Scenarios, Improved SKU Change Management and Invite and Suspend a user!

Onsite, Remote or Hybrid? How are Leading Merchants Evolving Work?

How will retailers continue to respond to the changing demands of their corporate workforce?

The Top Technologies Retail Brands Should Invest in at Each Revenue Stage

The retail tech landscape continues to evolve and growing retailers struggle to keep up with the changing technology-enablement for their growth. Here's a quick recap of the technologies we see customers and friends leveraging as they grow.

Toolio Product Updates: August 10, 2022

Toolio updates this week include LY vs LLY Variant, Relative Filters in Master Data, and Time Frame Management Improvements!

Top Thought Leaders in Retail: Who Should You Be Following?

Eleven of the best and brightest thought leaders in retail to follow on LinkedIn and Twitter

What Retailers Must Consider when Planning During a Recession (a Webinar Recap)

Holiday planning is always an interesting beast in retail, but add a potential recession, linger supply chain "stuff" and unemployment fears and it gets even more intense. In this recap from our webinar on the topic, we highlight the takeaways for merch planning teams.

Welcome Our New VP of Sales

Our new VP of Sales shares his six principles for choosing a start-up that aligns to your own passions.

Toolio Product Updates: July 27, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Skipped Import Lines Visibility Improvements and Export Mapping Improvements!

Retail Planners vs. Merchandisers vs. Allocators

Buyers, retail strategic planning, and allocation roles are all extremely important in the retail ecosystem. Read more about the difference in the jobs here.

Open-To-Buy Planning - What is OTB for Retail?

OTB planning is essential to bridging the gap between your retail operations and planning. Here's our guide to managing it like a rockstar.

3 Reasons Open-to-Buy is THE Critical Planning Tool for Retailers

Open-to-buy in retail is an essential tool to efficiently handle finances, inventory, and more. See how open-to-buy planning can help your business.

UNTUCKit Invests in Agility and Scale

Read about our new Toolio partnership with UNTUCKit and why they chose Toolio as their partner for unprecedented growth.

The Top Traits of a Great Merchandiser

In retail, merchandising is one of the most sought-after positions - and also among the most complex. While the job certainly comes with an undeniable cool factor, it requires the merchandiser to wear a lot of hats and own a lot of responsibilities...

Toolio Achieves ‘Built for NetSuite’ Status

Toolio announces the honor of achieving "Built for NetSuite" status to help organizations bring NetSuite data into Toolio to manage planning and merchandising processes end-to-end.

Toolio Product Updates: June 29, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Size Spread & Like for Like Forecast Profiles, Last Imported Time on MP & IP, Scheduled Report Deliveries for CSV & Excel, Scenario Locking Improvements, Metric Formatting Improvements, and Transfer Orders in Master Data!

To The Next Generation of Retailers…Say Good-Bye to Merchandise Planning Spreadsheets

Inventory is the most expensive asset for retailers, yet many still manage it in Excel, decades-old on-prem softwares or through homegrown solutions that long-ago lost priority to maintain and improve. The solution for next-gen retailers is a next-gen software, like Toolio.

4 Surprising Things I Learned During My First Job in Retail Planning

Retail planning careers can be perfect for those who love fashion, numbers and really, really big spreadsheets.

Toolio Product Updates: June 15, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Size Spreads in Item Plan Forecasting, Locking a scenario, Placeholder ID generation, Highlighting Duplicate Choices, and the ability to View Receipt Totals in PO Master Data!

Toolio Product Updates: May 31, 2022

Toolio updates this week include Clusters, Location, and Channel Improvements, Item Plan Like For Like Forecasting, Metric Separator, Scheduled Report Deliveries for Master Data, Deleted Line Handling Improvements, Data Visibility & Troubleshooting Improvements, Exporter Configuration Menu and completion of Merchandise Plan Migration!

Impact of increased lead times

Over the past 2+ years, we have been experiencing many shifts in business and supply chain trends, causing many changes to our expectations and process. As Planners we need to update our merch plans to incorporate the product mix changes and product flow shifts. These changes can cause both short and long term effects. We are all trying to figure out what the new KPI's and benchmarks will be based on the fluctuating variables.

Toolio featured in CB Insights Retail Tech 100

We're proud to be featured in CB Insights Retail Tech 100: The top retail tech companies of 2022!

Welcoming Our VP of Engineering

Mustafa Demir joined the team as VP of Engineering, and in this Behind the Scenes post he dives into what led him to Toolio.

Hindsight 2021

Hindsighting is the name of the game in retail. It is the practice of studying past performance, analyzing the top performers and the flops, and taking lessons on how to adapt plans in order to effectively reforecast for the future. Taking a cue from our favorite discipline of retail science, we would like to reflect on the past year at Toolio.

Toolio Product Updates: Oct 18, 2021

With our latest updates you’re now able to merge scenarios in Item Plan and access Master Data on main navigation menu.

Toolio Product Updates: Oct 11, 2021

Toolio’s updates this week include: improved sorting UI and added ability to edit Merchandise Plan and Item Plan options.

Toolio Product Updates: October 4, 2021

Our latest updates include: improved user experience in Item Plan when generating inventory and receipts and ability to track import statuses.

Toolio Product Updates: September 27, 2021

Check out our newest updates in Toolio including generating Purchase Orders from Assortment Plan, highlights within Assortment Plan Spreads, and more visibility into integration imports.

Toolio Product Updates: September 20, 2021

Toolio’s update this week include: Spreads tab in Data & Imports, Item Planning Min/Max for Receipt Generation, and an integration to SAP.

Toolio Product Updates: September 13, 2021

Click here to read some of the newly released features at Toolio! We’ve updated the Product Mix dashboard in Assortment Plan, added abilities to Item Plan scenario playing, and given you more visibility into Generating Assortment Plans from Item Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: September 7, 2021

Click here to read some of the newly released features at Toolio! Updates include: dynamic inventory generation with start times, filters exposed to front-end users, and automated Plan data export to data warehouse.

Toolio Product Updates: August 30, 2021

Click here to read some of the newly released features at Toolio! Updates include Scenario Playing and Forecasting updates in Item Plan, ability to recreate SKUs in Assortment Plan, and improved visibility to formulas in the Merchandise Pivot View.

Toolio Product Updates: August 23, 2021

Toolio updates this week include: formula visibility in Assortment Plan views, date ranges visible for time frames in Assortment Planning, confirmation pop-up when generating Item Plan to Assortment Plan, and linking Assortment Plan to Item Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: August 16, 2021

With our latest updates you’re now able to: retrigger integration and add/delete metric rollups in Assortment Plan settings.

Toolio Product Updates: August 9, 2021

Toolio updates this week include: added Derived Attributes capabilities, specified user roles, created integration view, added % Var Plan vs Plan LY variant, added filters in Import Page.

Toolio Product Updates: August 2, 2021

We’re excited to share some of the newly released features at Toolio! Updates include Item Plan reconciliation, customizing your assortments, and improvements to forecasting and inventory planning in Item Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: July 26, 2021

With our latest updates you’re now able to take advantage of custom formulas in Assortment Plan and plan using the Gregorian Calendar in Merchandise Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: July 19, 2021

We’re excited to share our latest product updates which introduced Average Per Week metrics to Assortment Plan, % of TTL Improvements in Merchandise Plan, the ability to Reallocate Uncategorized plan values, and updates to the Data & Imports menu.

Toolio Product Updates: July 12, 2021

Toolio updates this week include new features to reporting time frames, change history tracking in Assortment Planning, and an enhanced week selector menu. Click here to learn more!

Toolio Product Updates: July 6, 2021

Check out our latest updates that introduced new features to Flowing On Order to Receipts, accessing your Raw Data from Item Plan, and using the Average per Week metric in Hindsight.

Toolio Product Updates: June 28, 2021

We’re excited to share some of the newly released features at Toolio! Updates include importing TSV file types, capturing the status of Assortment Plan line items, and utilizing placeholders to plan in Assortment Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: June 21, 2021

This week's updates introduce new features to Assortment Plan, Item Plan, and the Data Models in Toolio. Read more to learn about Custom Conditional Formatting Colors, Conditional Formatting in Item Plan, the introduction of the Assortment Plan Item Data Model, Forecasting in Item Plan with Actual Sales Seasonality, Customizing Variants directly in Item Plan, and the ability to set Output Metrics in Assortment Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: June 14, 2021

Check out our latest updates that introduced new features to Item Plan, Assortment Plan, and Data Models in Toolio. Read to learn more about exporting data from data models, planning by season in Item Plan, forecasting using custom volume trends, conditional formatting in Item Plan, and interconnectivity between Assortment Plan and Item Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: June 7, 2021

Our newest updates introduce new receipt forecasting functionality in Merchandise Plan, search functionality in the view selector menu, new volume methods for Item Plan forecasting, filter by metric capabilities in Item Plan, ability to edit your Product Master directly, and contextual export file names.

Toolio Product Updates: June 1, 2021

We’re excited to share some of the features that shipped this week at Toolio! Updates include seeding an Assortment Plan, Generating Item Plans from Assortment Plans, and Exporting Data from Item Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: May 24, 2021

Toolio updates this week include additional features in Assortment Plan, such as Like for Like updates and enhanced filtering, updated Sort features within Item Plan, new functionality included in the Gregorian Projection, and updates to the filters within the Data Models. Click here to learn more!

Toolio Product Updates: May 17, 2021

Check out our newest features released into Toolio including updates to the View Selector menu, additional relative time frames to utilize in Item Planning, the ability to seed by various weights in Merchandise Planning, and enhanced product images across the platform. We’ve also continued to build out of the box views to help you manage your data in Toolio.

Toolio Product Updates: May 10, 2021

Toolio’s newest updates include enhancements to the Merchandise Plan, Assortment Plan, and Item Plan modules! Read to learn more about our recent product updates that introduced Conditional Formatting improvements, the ability to Pivot by Attributes in Item Plan, and support for Top Down Planning in Assortment Plan.

How to Pick Merchandise Planning Attributes

For top down planning, your organization needs to determine the attributes to use. Given the high number of attributes that you will already be using for slicing and dicing reports, figuring out which attributes to use for top down planning can be a challenge. This post covers quick guidelines on how to figure out which planning attributes to pick for your business.

Knix Joins Toolio to Become More Agile as They Grow

Knix, a direct to consumer intimate apparel brand that is re-inventing intimates for real life, has joined Toolio to help them scale and become more agile in planning and merchandising.

Toolio Product Updates: May 3, 2021

Toolio’s newest updates include enhancements to the Merchandise Plan, Assortment Plan, and Item Plan modules! Read to learn more about our recent product updates that introduced the Item Plan Time Range Selector, released new Out of the Box Views on all modules, and improved Merchandise Plan Pivot Functions.

Toolio Product Updates: April 26, 2021

Toolio’s newest updates include enhancements to Item Plan, Attributes, and Shopify Integration! Read to learn more about our recent product updates that introduced the Sorting feature to Item Plan, added core attributes to the attribute settings menu, and released support for multiple Shopify stores.

How to Generate Stock Keeping Units (SKUs)

In this guide we break down the common approaches to generating SKUs.

Toolio Product Updates: April 19, 2021

Toolio is regularly improving to enhance your experience! Read to learn more about our recent product updates that introduced Conditional Formatting in Merchandise Planning, updates to the Assortment Plan Product Mix and visibility into plan dates, and On Order Flowing in Item Plan.

Toolio Product Updates: April 5, 2021

Toolio is constantly improving to further optimize your planning workflows! Read to learn more about our recent product updates that introduced Scenario Saving to Views, Metric Totals in Item Planning, and the Variance Metric Variant.

Outerknown Joins Toolio for Data-driven Merchandising

Outerknown, an apparel brand founded by pro surfer Kelly Slater and rooted in radical sustainability and circularity, has joined #Toolio to help them become more dynamic and data-driven in planning and merchandising.

Mack Weldon joins Toolio to optimize planning processes

Mack Weldon, a leading DTC brand reinventing men's basics has joined #Toolio to help them scale their merchandising organization and optimize planning processes.

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

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.

Free Template: How to Calculate Size Curves

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.

Initial Markup (IMU) Vs. 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.

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

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

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 - 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.

Prediction 1: Retailers Will Leverage Technology

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.

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

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.