Sell-through expectations by launch tier: 90 days, 45 days, 14 days, 1 day

What it is

A season of North America men's running footwear carried about 250 products. They sold through seven kinds of retailer, from running specialty and boutiques to sporting goods and family footwear. The fall 2018 pricing framework counted 254 products in its starting state.

Khounlavong's review of the holiday 2017 line in October 2016 named the gap in the tools. The stories were driven by color and collection, not by product. He asked what the line was standing for. He asked for a line list that defined the total model offering, the price points, what was new and how it compared to the prior year.

What Khounlavong did

• Raised the need in his summer 2018 product read-out of April 2017. His note read "Need to plan sell-thru expectations," with three tiers: foundation at 90 days, seasonal at 45 days and energy at 14 days.
• Set out the full framework in his fall 2018 read-out of July 13, 2017. It had four tiers. Essentials were planned to sell through in 90 days, seasonal product in 45 days, energy product in 14 days and what he called evaporation product in 1 day.
• Built a seasonal framework page for each platform: Max Air, Free and Flex, Zoom Air, React and Lunar, and entry level. Each model was a row. The columns were four essential colors, two seasonal flows, and each channel by name, including Dick's Sporting Goods, Foot Locker, Finish Line, city specialty, boutiques, moderate department stores and family footwear.
• Filled each cell with a planned window of 12 months, 6 months, 45 days or 2 weeks. The Pegasus 35 essentials were set at 12 months. The Vaporfly 4% essentials were set at 6 months. VaporMax Flyknit essentials were set at 45 days and its seasonal colors at 2 weeks. The Zoom Fly SP was set at 2 weeks, in city specialty and boutiques only.
• Kept the framework to the inline offering. Packs and high energy requests were left off the framework pages.
• Applied the same logic by color in the summer 2018 VaporMax allocation tool of June 2017. An exclusive with allocation set by sales carried a 3 day expectation. A city specialty exclusive carried 2 weeks.
• Balanced wholesale sell-through and direct margin across 5,000+ points of distribution. This line is confirmed by Khounlavong. No Nike document carries the figure.

Results

• The global wrap-up of the summer 2018 read-outs, dated April 26, 2017, assigned global merchandising and sales to give the geographies a sell-through and allocation plan for every VaporMax Flyknit version before the next planning gate, set for May 15, 2017.
• The VaporMax allocation tool that followed in June 2017 carried columns for a global recommended sell-through expectation in weeks and a global sell-through target.
• The July 2017 read-out listed alignment on the four planned expectations as a top line item. Khounlavong left the category that month for Nike By You. No document records whether the framework was adopted after he left.

At a glance