I commit the money · The Buyer

You committed the budget in March. You find out in September.

You commit open-to-buy in March against a spreadsheet and a feeling. Your supplier's forecast is a sales target wearing a forecast's clothes. You negotiate hard on margin in January and hand it all back in markdown in September, and everybody calls that the cost of doing business. Your supplier brings an analyst to that meeting. What do you bring?

See it on your own data StockPulse, forecasting and replenishment

The promise

What changes on Tuesday.

A forecast that thinks: seasonality, trend, paydays, promotions, and actual lead times rather than promised ones. Cannibalisation modelled before you commit, not discovered in the post-mortem. A lifecycle profile, so you know the shape of the curve before you buy the top of it.

The proof: Promised lead time versus actual, decomposed by stage. You will find out which supplier has been lying to you politely.

The reasoning under one recommended order: lead time 10 days (product override) plus a 7-day review cycle is a 17-day horizon; forecast demand over the horizon 27 units, seasonality applied; netting 27 less 11 on hand less 0 on order is 16 to order; cadence events inside the horizon already in the run rate: payday and month-end trade.

Look at the lead time. 10 days, as a product override, plus the 7-day review cycle, is the horizon the order is sized to. Promised and actual are kept apart, per supplier. For you: You walk into the supplier meeting knowing what the last commitment delivered against what was promised, and what it would take to move the inventory you are both looking at. demo estate · names, prices and geography invented; sales, inventory and gaps real · money masked

The other doors

I keep the shelves fullThe Planner → I decide what goes whereThe Allocator → I run the promotionsPromotions & Marketing →

See it on your own data.

Twelve weeks, one category, anonymised by you. A ten-minute job, not a project. Send it Thursday and you'll have the findings the following Wednesday.

1 · The extract"Twelve weeks, one category, anonymised by you." A ten-minute job, not a project. No NDA drama, no IT ticket, nothing to approve.

2 · The findings"Here is what it found in your data." The engine has never met a real dataset it did not find something embarrassing in. Evidence about you, not persuasion.

3 · Run-alongside"Eight weeks. It doesn't touch anything." Zero operational risk; your own scorecard.

4 · Founding agreement"One of three places." By then you have your own proof, and the scarcity is real.

Send the extract

A personal reply within 24 hours, from Rob, not a sequence.