Neil Marchant

Retailer intake figures are rarely neutral: they're anchored on the buyer's enthusiasm, negotiation posture, or last year's comparable. The core problem isn't "forecast the SKU", it's arriving at a defensible independent number to interrogate the retailer's seasonal volume before you commit cash to a 15-week buy. Your job is to build a bottom-up estimate from first principles and triangulate it against their top-down number, then treat the buy quantity as an economic decision (cost of over-...

This morning, I had a long overdue catch-up with Helen Myatt, a former colleague from over 15 years ago. We recently reconnected after she commented on a post I shared about using a product categorisation framework to make better inventory decisions, a topic that clearly struck a chord. Helen’s been at an interesting crossroads. After leaving her last company and spending some valuable time with family, she’s now considering her next step. In the meantime, she’s been involved in a project...

Couples therapy through The Simpsons Marge is your Supply Chain. Always planning. Always worrying. "We need more safety stock." Homer is your Finance team. Focused on right now. "Why is so much cash tied up in inventory?!" They both want the same thing, a healthy business. But they've never actually said that to each other. The issue isn't money. It's communication. Both teams have: Different languages for the same goal. Finance speaks cash; Supply Chain speaks delivery performance. Both are...