merchmix.

PRODUCT REVIEW

The trade meeting, with the numbers already done.

Weekly, monthly, quarterly and seasonal reviews run on the same workspace. Nobody builds the pack and nobody goes and gets it. It is compiled from live trading data and sent to your inbox every Monday, so the meeting opens on a position everyone has already read.

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Weekly trade pack compiled automatically and scheduled to arrive every Monday

CREATE THE REVIEW

Get the trade pack without anyone building it.

Most trade packs are rebuilt by hand every week, and the rebuild is where the hours go. A review in Merchmix is created from a scope rather than a spreadsheet. Choose the year, the period and how far down the hierarchy you are looking, and the pack is compiled from live data with the same layout every time.

Period and cadence

Weekly, monthly, quarterly and seasonal reviews run on one layout. The cadence changes the window, not the workspace, so a quarterly wrap reads the same way as a Monday morning.

Trading scope

Department, category and subcategory are set at the point of creation. The pack covers the part of the business the meeting is actually about, not the whole estate.

Saved and searchable

Every review is saved against its brand, scope, period and year, and stays open afterwards. The pack is a fixed record of what the numbers said that week, and last month is one click away when someone asks what changed.

Arrives without asking

The pack is scheduled and delivered every Monday morning. Nobody logs in to generate it, nobody chases the person who normally builds it, and the meeting is not the first time anyone has seen the numbers.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

The pack is compiled and the briefing written before anyone opens the system, grounded only in the report and the scope you selected, then delivered on the schedule you set. The work that used to fill Monday morning is done by the time Monday morning starts.

HOW IT CONNECTS

Product Review reads the merchandise hierarchy and trading data already in Merchmix, so the pack is built from the same numbers the plan is built from.

See how the plan trades week by week →
Weekly trading position showing sales, gross profit and units against eight trading metrics with markdown pressure

THE TRADE POSITION

See what the week cost you, not just what it sold.

A trading position is not one number. It is sales against margin against stock, each moving in a different direction, and the read only makes sense when they are on the same screen. The dashboard opens on the full position with last week and last year attached to every metric, so movement is visible without opening a second file.

Topline and forecast

Sales, gross profit and units shown against current, season to date and next week. The forecast sits next to the actual rather than in a separate model.

Trading metrics

GP%, sell through, CSOH, markdown mix, stock turn and GMROI on one row. Margin health and stock health are read together, which is where most weekly packs separate them.

Last week and last year

Every tile carries both comparisons. A number moving up on last week and down on last year is a different conversation from one moving up on both, and the tile shows which it is.

Markdown pressure

A direct read on how much of the margin is being given away to move stock, so a strong sales week that cost too much shows as what it is.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

An executive overview written from the current report, summarising what moved and what it cost, with key highlights and priority risks called out before anyone opens the detail.

HOW IT CONNECTS

The position is read from MFP and WSSI, so the pack and the forecast are never two versions of the same week.

Category drill down expanding from company level into department, category and individual styles with status flags

TRADE DRILL DOWN

Find the styles behind the miss without exporting anything.

A topline miss is only useful once you know which part of the business caused it. The drill down opens the full hierarchy from company root to individual style, with the same trading columns at every level, so the cause is found by expanding rather than by exporting.

Four level hierarchy

Company, division, category and style in one expanding table. Open a branch and the columns stay put, so the comparison holds as you go deeper.

Full trading columns

Sales, units, GP dollars and percent, versus budget, versus last year, sell through, markdown mix, variance, CSOH and weeks of cover on every row.

Status on every row

Outperforming, underperforming or mixed, flagged as the branch opens. The eye goes to the problem rather than reading thirteen columns to find it.

Scope filters

Narrow to a brand, category or subcategory without rebuilding the view or losing the position you were looking at.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

Category and style level signals are extracted from the same report, so the pattern across a subcategory is surfaced rather than left to be spotted row by row.

HOW IT CONNECTS

The hierarchy is the one already used in planning and allocation, so a category that looks wrong here is the same category everywhere else.

Top best sellers and bottom sellers ranked side by side with units, sales, gross profit, cover and stock on hand

BEST AND WORST SELLERS

Chase the winners and exit the tail in one sitting.

Best sellers get chased and worst sellers get forgotten, usually because they live in two different reports. Here they open together, ranked, with the product on screen. The decision to chase one line and exit another gets made in the same minute rather than a fortnight apart.

Ranked both ways

Top sellers and bottom sellers in one view. The tail is not something you have to go looking for, which is usually why it survives another season.

Product on screen

Images against every option. Buyers recognise the range rather than reading style codes, and the conversation moves faster for it.

Trading detail

Units, sales, gross profit, weeks of cover and stock on hand against every option, so a good seller with no cover and a bad seller with too much are both obvious.

Flagged for review

Low yield options surfaced for a decision. Exit, mark down or leave, but taken deliberately rather than by default.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

Recommended actions are attached to individual options, naming the style to chase and the lines to exit, with the potential upside stated against each one.

HOW IT CONNECTS

Chase decisions carry into replenishment, and the season's winners and losers feed carry, cull and create in assortment planning.

What is assortment planning and how does it work? →
Competitor assortment volume, average price point and markdown activity with tracked price movements by product

COMPETITORS

Know if the market moved before you blame the product.

Sell through is usually read against your own history, which says nothing about whether the market moved. Competitor data sits inside the same review, so a soft week can be checked against what everyone else was doing on price before it is treated as a product problem.

Assortment volume

Style counts by competitor with the shift since the last period, so a range expanding against yours is visible while there is still time to respond.

Average price point

Where each competitor sits and which way they moved. A rising average against a falling one is a positioning change, not noise.

Markdown activity

How much of their range is on promotion. A full price week against a market at forty per cent off reads very differently from the same week against a market holding price.

Tracked price movers

Individual products with the old price, the new price and the change, so the move is specific rather than an average.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

Competitor ranges are tracked automatically, with styles matched to comparable products in your own range, price movements detected between crawls, and markdown participation calculated across their assortment. The comparison stays current without anyone maintaining a list.

HOW IT CONNECTS

Competitor movement feeds the pricing workbench, so a market shift can be answered with a price action in the same session.

Chase, exit and review actions each carrying their value and assignable as a task

ACTIONS TO TAKE

Leave the meeting with the actions already assigned.

Trade meetings generate opinions faster than they generate decisions, and the decisions that do get made are usually the ones argued most confidently rather than the ones worth the most. Actions here are raised against the line that triggered them and carry their value on the face of the card, so a chase and an exit can be ranked against each other before anyone commits.

Chase, exit, review

Three action types, each tied to the option or category that caused it. The action arrives with its own evidence attached, so nobody has to reconstruct why it was raised a week later.

Value on the card

Potential upside on a chase, cash release on an exit, markdown mix on a review. A hundred thousand of released cash and a seventy thousand chase get prioritised on what they are worth.

Assigned to a person

Actions leave the meeting with an owner rather than sitting in a document. The following week opens on what was agreed rather than on a fresh set of numbers.

Worked from exceptions

Actions are compiled from what actually moved, so the list is short enough to get through and specific enough to act on.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

Recommended actions are generated from the report and named against individual styles and categories, each with the upside or the cash release stated, so the list arrives ranked rather than raised from memory.

HOW IT CONNECTS

Actions become tasks in Merchmix, and stock decisions carry into allocation and replenishment the same week.

See how stock moves after the decision →
Structured trade notes recording deliveries, delays and category highlights against the review

TRADE NOTES

Stop re-explaining last month's numbers from memory.

The reasoning behind a trading decision usually lives in a document nobody opens again, which is why the same question gets asked three weeks running. Trade notes are structured, held against the review they belong to, and drawn from the operational detail already in your systems, so the record of why is kept next to the record of what.

Comments on trade

Deliveries, delays, instore dates and launch timing recorded against the week. When a category misses because the stock landed late, the reason is on the pack rather than in a thread.

Highlights and lowlights

What worked and what did not, written by category with the numbers attached, so a strong knits week and a weak pants week are both explained rather than just reported.

Forward actions

Promotional activity, launches and markdown plans laid out by week ahead, so the pack closes on what happens next rather than only on what already happened.

Meeting on the record

The trade meeting is recorded against the review with a transcript and full history, so what was said and what was decided stay together.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

Notes are drafted from the report and the meeting rather than from a blank box, with the operational narrative pulled through from your ERP, so the write up starts from the detail and the team edits rather than authors.

HOW IT CONNECTS

Trade notes are held against the review and carry into the next period's pack, so last month's reasoning is open when this month's numbers are being read.

Pricing workbench recommending a price per style with markdown depth, GP lift, risk and decision lanes

PRICING

Review the whole price list by working the exceptions.

Nine hundred styles cannot be priced individually every week, so in most businesses they are priced by rule and reviewed by nobody. The workbench sets an objective, recommends a price against every style, and sorts the range into lanes so attention lands on the lines that need a person.

Set the objective

Scope the run by period and hierarchy, then state what you are optimising for. The recommendations answer that question rather than a generic one.

Price per style

Current price, recommended price, markdown depth, GP lift, stock on hand and cover on every row, with a confidence and a risk rating attached.

Decision lanes

Autopilot, tune, investigate, hold and approved. The team works the exceptions and the settled lines stay settled, which is what makes a nine hundred style list reviewable at all.

Opportunity map

Profit upside plotted against urgency, so the money that has to move this week is separated from the money that can wait.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

Recommended prices are generated against the objective you set, each carrying a confidence and a risk rating, and routed into a lane so the range arrives pre-sorted rather than flat.

HOW IT CONNECTS

Approved prices publish out, and the margin effect lands back in the trading position at the next review.

Markdown command centre modelling further markdown depth against new price, projected units, margin and gross profit

MARKDOWNS

Know what the markdown costs before you approve it.

A markdown is a permanent decision taken on a projection, and the projection is usually made in a spreadsheet nobody keeps. The command centre models the depth against the outcome, line by line, with the margin and gross profit recalculating as the number changes, and keeps the version that was agreed.

Review boards

Markdown reviews saved by hierarchy, financial year and status. Work in progress stays as a draft until it is deliberately approved.

Exposure before you save

The plan is checked against the whole range and warns when too much of the stock on hand is committed to markdown, with projected sales, gross profit and margin stated against the depth you are proposing.

Exceptions flagged

Lines breaking margin thresholds are surfaced on the row. A style going out at four per cent margin is caught in the model rather than in the month end.

Scenarios and snapshots

Compare plans against each other and keep a record of what was agreed, so the decision can be explained later.

MERCHMIX INTELLIGENCE

Markdown exposure is assessed across the whole plan before it is saved, flagging when too much of the stock on hand is committed to markdown, with projected sales, gross profit and margin recalculated against the depth you are proposing. What-if scenarios model the alternative before the decision is taken.

HOW IT CONNECTS

Approved markdowns carry into pricing and land in the WSSI margin position, so the plan reflects the decision immediately.

What is a retail markdown? →
“Margin was leaking through data inconsistencies. Merchmix highlighted where it was happening and why. We fixed it and protected profit.”

Amit Sharma

CIO, Auriste

Amit Sharma, CIO at Auriste, on finding and fixing margin leakage with Merchmix

HOW IT CONNECTS

One review that carries into the plan.

Decisions taken in the review update the plan they came from, so the next week starts from where the last one finished.

MFP / WSSI

Forecast and intake reset from the position you just agreed.

Allocation and replenishment

Chase and exit decisions move stock the same week.

Assortment planning

Best and worst sellers feed carry, cull and create for next season.

Supplier portal

Repeat buys placed against the options that are actually selling.

See a trade review on your own numbers.

Run a six week proof of concept on your own data and take a real weekly review in Merchmix.

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Common questions about product review