Global broadcast and geography calendar: one plan sent to four geographies

What it is

The customization line was set globally and sold by four geographies: North America, Europe with the Middle East and Africa, Greater China, and Asia Pacific with Latin America. Each geography confirmed the global strategy, sent in its own requests for samples and finished pairs, and ran the launch on its own site.

When Khounlavong arrived in July 2017 the support organization below the global team had been eliminated. His year-end review records that his contacts went from 5 people to upwards of 45, with nine category partners on top. Before the change, global merchandising spoke to one customization merchant per geography. After it, global merchandising spoke to the category buyers in every geography.

His own review of the function lists what was missing: line plans built on wrong information, no visual launch calendars and incomplete broadcasts to the geographies.

What Khounlavong did

• Led the global merchandising handover at the fall 2018 assortment meeting, August 14 to 16, 2017. The third day was a geography day, with round tables for Western Europe, China and North America.
• Set six merchandising priorities for the function at that meeting: celebrate sport and cultural moments, rich storytelling, a balanced portfolio, energy through launches, robust and informative tools, and freshness through flow.
• Set one timeline for every season. Each season had the same seven steps: launch dates communicated, the broadcast and toolkit handed off, the final toolkit provided, the deadline for brand and retail requests, the geography calls, finished pairs published, and the first offer date.
• Gave each geography a one-page alignment form to mark the season green, yellow or red on stories, color, flow, product and assortment.
• Built the global broadcast deck as the standard handoff. Each deck carried the consumer profiles, the merchandising priorities, the footwear line plan, the concept map, the financial plan and the updated timeline.
• Reissued the decks as plans changed. The files hold broadcasts for summer, fall and holiday 2018 and spring 2019, in versions dated from October 2017 to May 2018.
• Put a financial plan in the broadcast. The holiday 2018 deck set a forecast of $49.5M, up 1.7% on the year before and 4.9% over budget, broken out by category, by tier and by franchise, with a dollar figure against each risk.
• Gave each geography a target. For holiday 2018: North America $25.0M, Europe with the Middle East and Africa $17.9M, Greater China $2.8M, and Asia Pacific with Latin America $3.8M.
• Built the concept map, one page per season that set every story by tier, category and date against the sport and cultural moments of the season. Each version listed its changes.
• Built a weekly launch calendar by category, with the launch date, the date off the site and the units for each style.
• Ran the weekly calls with the geographies.

Results

• The new seasonal concept map rolled out for fall 2018, recorded in his official Nike year-end review.
• The same review records four tools his team created that had not existed in the business before: a financial comparison tool, the global broadcast deck, the visual launch calendar and the concept map.
• The job description for a merchandising manager reporting to his seat, dated January 2018, made the launch calendar, the seasonal toolkit and communication 50% of that job.
• His July 2018 plan set the next step: broadcast timelines aligned to the regular line's calendar, and North America as the pilot for a process to scale to all geographies.

At a glance