What is Merchmix Core Plus?

Core Plus is the execution layer in Merchmix, a merchandising and inventory operating system with intelligence at its core. It covers store grading and size strategy, allocation, replenishment, store transfers, the inventory snapshot and visual merchandising.

What is the difference between Core and Core Plus?

Core plans and trades the season: budget, MFP, WSSI, range, calendar and trade review. Core Plus executes it: grading stores, setting size curves, allocating stock, replenishing it, moving it between stores and laying it out on the floor.

How are stores graded?

Stores are plotted on a grid by revenue and size, and a buy grade is set for each cell. Bands can be suggested from the data or set by hand, and stores that do not fit their cell are listed with the cell they should be in.

What replenishment models are available?

Rate of sale, min-max, one-for-one, weeks of supply, safety stock buffer, demand curve refill, one-for-one sales, initial allocated quantity and no refill. Each shows the formula it runs, and rules can be set globally with per-store overrides.

Do we need clean size data before this works?

Not before you start. The size mapping library collapses historical variants into canonical templates and reports the share of revenue and inventory already mapped, with an unmapped queue ranked by revenue at stake, so the expensive gaps get fixed first.

Can we see it on our own stores?

Yes. The six-week proof of concept runs Core Plus on your own store network, your own sales history and your own stock.

CORE PLUS · EXECUTION

The plan is worth nothing
until it is on the floor.

Core Plus takes what was planned and puts it in stores. Two decisions set the whole season: how each store is graded and what size curve it runs. Everything after that follows.

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01 · STORE NETWORK & GRADING

Grade stores on what they sell, not what they are called.

Every store in the network with its role, its serving distribution centre, its trading volume and its floor space. Stores are then plotted on a grid of revenue against size and given a buy grade per cell, so a small high-turnover store is never graded like a large slow one. Cluster health reports what share of the estate is graded and names the stores sitting in the wrong cell, with the cell they belong in. Grading is a merchandising decision, so it argues with you rather than deciding for you.

Revenue against size.

A two-axis grid, not a store list ranked by turnover.

Bands proposed, then adjusted.

Revenue and size bands suggested from the data and set by hand.

A grade per cell.

Buy grades applied to each cell of the grid rather than to each store in turn.

Outliers named.

Stores that do not fit their cell listed with the suggested cell and the reason.

Store clusters graded by revenue and size in Merchmix Core Plus

See allocation and replenishment →

02 · SIZE INTELLIGENCE

Sizes that mean the same thing everywhere.

Size data arrives inconsistent from every source, and an allocation is only ever as accurate as the size spine underneath it. Templates define the canonical grid per scope, mapping resolves what each source calls a size back to that grid, and strategies decide how a curve is built and how far it can bend by store. Size analysis then reads real trading weeks, chosen by the planner rather than assumed, so the curve reflects what actually sold.

One canonical grid.

Templates set the size spine every source is resolved against.

Mapped, not guessed.

Supplier and system size labels reconciled to the template rather than matched on text.

Curves from real weeks.

Peak trading dates selected by the planner, not defaulted.

Bend by store.

Strategies set how far a store's curve can move from the national shape.

Size analysis by store and product in Merchmix Core Plus

See allocation and replenishment →

03 · ALLOCATION & REPLENISHMENT

Push the first drop, then hold the shelf.

Allocation places the initial drop against grade, size curve and store capacity. Replenishment then holds it, with a model per style setting the minimum and the maximum each store carries and refills raised in bulk against those rules rather than style by style. Store transfers move stock that landed in the wrong place without it going back through the distribution centre. It is one workflow, from first allocation to the transfer that fixes week nine.

Graded, not evenly split.

The first drop follows buy grade and size curve rather than an even spread.

A model per style.

Minimums and maximums set by style and store, not one rule across the range.

Refills in bulk.

Every style needing stock raised together against its model, with the rule visible on each line.

Transfers, not returns.

Stock moved store to store when it landed in the wrong place.

Bulk refill showing every style in the warehouse with its replenishment rule

See allocation and replenishment →

04 · INVENTORY TRUTH

One number for what you actually hold.

Every calculation above this depends on the stock position being right. The snapshot is a read-only view of distribution centre and store on-hand by SKU and size at a point in time, with each line flagged against its own minimum and maximum. Negative and below-minimum lines surface as status rather than being found later, which is how a replenishment rule gets corrected before it has quietly starved a store for a month.

DC and store on one line.

Warehouse and shop floor stock side by side per SKU and size.

Read against its own rule.

Every line compared with the minimum and maximum set for it.

Exceptions as status.

Below minimum, over maximum and negative shown as a state, not as a report to run.

A point in time.

A dated position that can be argued from, rather than a figure that moved while you read it.

DC and store inventory snapshot in Merchmix Core Plus

See allocation and replenishment →

05 · FLOOR PLANS & FIXTURES

Build the layout once, not once per store.

A floor plan in Merchmix is a store format rather than a single store. It owns the walls, the zones and the fixtures, and many stores share it, so the regional standard is built once and every season built on it reuses the same footprint. Capacity is calculated from the fixtures on the plan, so each format carries a unit figure without anyone counting shelves, and changing a fixture changes it everywhere that format is used.

A format, not a store.

One plan owns the walls, zones and fixtures, and every store on it inherits the layout.

Capacity from the plan.

Unit capacity calculated from the fixtures rather than estimated.

Change once.

A fixture edited in the library updates every plan that uses it.

Nothing unassigned.

Stores with no floor plan are visible, because a store without one receives no planogram.

Store floor plan with fixtures in Merchmix Core Plus

See visual merchandising and planogram →

06 · PLANOGRAMS & FIXTURE PERFORMANCE

The range reaches the fixture, and the fixture reports back.

This is where the range meets the space. The approved range plan feeds the fixture catalogue, so the products recommended for a bay are the ones you actually bought, placed with a display rule and a quantity per style rather than a category on a PDF. Every product placed then carries its own performance, which is how visual merchandising finally reports a figure instead of an opinion.

Pushed from the range plan.

The approved range feeds the catalogue, so what is placed is what was bought.

Performance per placement.

Sell-through and weeks of cover sit against the product on the fixture, not the category it belongs to.

Value per fixture.

Each bay reports its placement value and the units placed, so the space carries a number.

Density against margin.

The health score reads how full a fixture is against what it earns, so a packed bay returning nothing is visible.

Planogram fixture view with product placed in Merchmix Core Plus

See visual merchandising and planogram →

Set it once, and it holds all season.

Core Plus is not a separate system. Store grade and size curve are set once and everything reads them: the first allocation, every nightly refill, every transfer that rebalances stock, and the planogram that lays it out. It takes the range and the buy from Core, the inbound picture from Beacon and the ledger from Horizon ERP, then keeps deciding as the season trades. Change a grade in week six and the rest of the season moves with it, rather than someone remembering to update four other places.

“The VM flow tool lets me map out walls, fixtures and flows digitally before rollout, and share changes instantly with every store.”

Sophie Langford

Senior Buyer, Sydney Australia

The plan is worth nothing
until it is on the floor.