About Lora Merryman
My name is Lora Merryman, I am a UD Fashion program alum. I completed my 4+1 program in Fashion and Apparel Studies in 2021, i.e., graduating with a Bachelor’s in Fashion Merchandising in Spring 2020 and a Master’s in Fashion and Apparel Studies in Spring 2021. During this time, I completed Summer Scholars and my master’s professional project with Dr. Lu. I was a summer intern at QVC with the Global Sourcing team in 2021 while completing my master’s. In May 2021, I started my career at Macy’s Inc. as an Assistant Assortment Analyst for Special Sizes. In June 2024, I was promoted to Associate Planner for Career Plus.
Question #1: What does an assortment analyst do?
Lora: As an assortment analyst, I work in the future seasons, and I often do multiple at once. We are currently planning for Spring 2025 and in the early stages of Fall 2025. Our season begins with getting the topline financials from the Financial Planning team–this is the total amount of money we are allocated to spend broken out by channel (stores/e-commerce) and by month for each of our areas of responsibility. My area of responsibility is Career Plus, so I work with market brands such as Karl Lagerfeld, Vince Camuto, Ralph Lauren, Anne Klein, and private brands. During this location planning process, we analyze past brand selling in each location to determine how much money should be allotted for each.
Those financials are then broken out further into “fashion” and “replenishment.” Replenishment consists of styles that don’t change from season to season (think of a pair of basic jeans or a black pair of dress pants). For my brands, I determine how many units/ how much replenishment will cost at the beginning of the season, leaving behind the rest of the dollars to be spent on new “fashion” items.
Once the replenishment is taken out of the total, leaving behind the “fashion” dollars, my team and I work with the buyers to create a Stock Keeping Unit (SKU) planner. This process is very collaborative between us and the buyers. The buyers provide guidance based on the performance of categories (knits, wovens, pants, etc.) by brand and climate. I use this performance guidance to determine how much of each category we can afford to send to stores and the e-commerce site. Basically, the buyers tell me what they want to buy, and I tell them how much they can afford to buy. All this information is populated into a chart, which is reviewed altogether and then taken to market appointments with the vendors so the buyers can submit their buys.
After the season is bought, my team allocates the units that were bought. We determine which location gets units and how many units it gets.
Question #2: Can you walk us through your typical day at Macy’s? Also, what makes you love your job?
Lora: A typical day changes depending on what part of the season we are currently in. The only consistent day is Monday, when we recap the business from the previous week. We analyze how much we drove in sales and compare that to the planned and last year’s sales volumes. On Mondays, we also have weekly meetings to review the business, what we are working on for the week, and key deadlines.
The rest of the week changes depending on where we are in the season. If we are in pre-season planning, I am working on SKU plans and having meetings with the buyers to show them the work and tell them what they can buy. If it is post-season, I will allocate units to stores. Those two processes take up most of the time, but we also make special door projections to show how corporate strategies are being implemented in each of my brands.
What I love most about my job is that everything has an answer. There is not a lot of uncertainty when your role is based on numbers. I like seeing what the numbers are saying and implementing new strategies based on current performance. I also really like my team. The other planners are very supportive and while our businesses rarely cross paths, we have a good working relationship where we have each other’s back and fill in where needed.
Question #3: How important is assortment planning to a fashion apparel retailer? What factors do apparel retailers consider when planning their assortment?
Lora: Assortment planning is the cornerstone of a fashion and apparel retailer. We work with every team that helps to get products to stores and online. Assortment planning is in most meetings about business because we have a hand in many of the processes. From planning how much money each store gets with the direction of financial planning’s topline notes to sending the items to the stores with the help of the buying team’s item analysis, our team has a hand in the end-to-end process.
Beyond that, my team is also in charge of determining which doors have which brands. We all do in-depth analysis to make sure the locations we are sending products to are profitable, and if they are not, we need to determine if those doors should no longer carry that brand. Since we work only in future seasons, it is important that we do our due diligence and analyze all of our work because once our strategies and plans are set, there is not much my team can do in the season to adjust.
Question #4: How is assortment planning related to but different from buying?
Lora: Planning differs from buying because we analyze brand performance at a door level. For example, how is each location selling? In comparison, the buyers analyze the products. For example, how is this pair of jeans sold in stores? We don’t have a hand in the specific product, just the doors to which the product is sent. The buyers also work with pricing products and online marketing, which my team does not. However, we go to many of the same meetings, and we are also in market and vendor appointments with the buyers looking at the products, planners are just not choosing the product.
Question #5: How has technology affected fashion companies’ assortment planning practices?
Lora: We use a lot of different software and technology in my role. A few applications we use help us more accurately predict sales and product needs in locations. We utilize a lot of numbers and results that are gathered on the back end. Large Excel sheets provide all sorts of formulas to calculate how much it will cost to send a dress to 30 stores with 8 units in each. This saves us a lot of time since we do it on a large scale for multiple brands. With all the technology we have, we can more accurately predict how many items we need to buy/sell to reach our sales plans.
Question #6: Based on your career experience, is there anything you learned in FASH330 that you find most relevant and helpful?
Lora: We use some of the formulas that we learned in FASH330. A lot of our reporting uses formulas to show profit margin, markdowns, and open to buy (OTB). The buyers utilize these concepts more frequently than my team, but all of those are concepts that are important to understand to understand what factors contribute to them when we are recapping and planning the business for the season. The background understanding of FASH330 is very important. Even if some concepts might not have an immediate practical application, they are still useful knowledge to understand how the industry works.
Question #7: What advice would you offer to current students preparing for a career related to assortment planning?
Lora: The biggest advice I can offer is to get to know Excel. I am in Excel most of the day, and even the other applications we use operate similarly to Excel. The keyboard commands and just being able to format tables is hugely useful and will save a lot of time.
Other than that, we work a lot in a group project type setting. This means it is essential to work with all different personalities across multiple levels and roles. On any given day, I speak to 3 different teams, and 3 different levels of management. There is a lot of cross-functional communication internally and externally so it’s important to be able to effectively communicate what you want from other teams and to explain your work to someone who might not know the details.
Additionally, it is important to stay organized and be able to prioritize your tasks. This comes with a learning curve since every job is different. In my role, there are many moving parts and deadlines moving up and changing, so it’s important to stay on top of everything. That being said, deadlines will change often, so it’s also vital to remain flexible.
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