As a new buyer at XYZ Department Store, you have been tasked with preparing the six-month Fall seasonal merchandise plan for your department. Your manager has given you last years Fall plan as a starting point, and arranged a meeting to give you some advice on how to proceed. At that meeting you hear the following: Last Fall we missed our planned sales by about 3.4%, which isnt bad considering how Covid was still impacting just about every business. All the indications were seeing point to an economic rebound later this year, but were also concerned about inflation. So were forecasting a 6% increase over last Falls actual total sales. Start from there to find the new total sales number for Fall 23. Then plan monthly sales, but youll need to adjust last Falls monthly sales percentages slightly. We saw more demand during Back-To-School than we expected, so use 9% for August, 12% for September, and 17%, 22%, 31%, 9% for the remaining months. Once you have monthly sales planned, use the Stock-Sales method to plan the beginning of month inventory we need each month. Use the ACTUAL stock-sales ratios from last Fall as a target. You can round those inventories to the nearest hundred dollars, to make things easier. Next, plan markdowns for each month, using last seasons planned percentages as a target. Finally, use your planned sales, markdowns, and BOM inventories to calculate planned purchases for each month. When your plan is ready, submit it to me so that we can review it together.

XYZ Stores, Ine. Your Department