Seasonality in apparel buying

A season is planned, sampled, costed, ordered, produced and shipped across most of a year. By the time goods arrive, the assumptions behind them, about demand, about weather, about price sensitivity, are old. That lag is structural and cannot be removed without giving up either cost or assortment.

It is also why a demand shift that lasts one quarter can produce an inventory problem that lasts four, as the sector-wide sequence in the 2022 timeline shows.

Inventory rises ahead of the selling season and falls after it, in every year, at every retailer. A quarter-over-quarter comparison across different points in the calendar therefore says nothing. The meaningful comparisons are the same quarter year over year, and the same retailer against its own seasonal pattern, which is the method used in the five-retailer analysis.

Speed programs, near-shore production and in-season reorders compress the cycle for a portion of the assortment at higher unit cost. Most chains run a mix: a long-lead core for cost and a short-lead fringe for responsiveness. The ratio between the two is one of the clearest expressions of a retailer's strategy.