Fashion · Stockout

Ward monitors stockout so your Fashion team can act on it early.

Stockout Prediction at scale, running across your whole Fashion estate without another dashboard to check.

Why stockout matters
in fashion retail.

Fashion stockouts are invisible, they show up as "size not available," not "product missing," and the POS never records the lost sale. Ward monitors sell-through velocity by style-size-color-store and detects when popular size runs are depleting faster than replenishment can cover within the remaining selling window.

Benchmarks. Fashion full-price sell-through targets: 60-75% by week 6, 75-85% by week 10. Broken size runs (a key size missing while others remain) typically affect 15-25% of styles in week 4 and 30-40% by week 8 without active rebalancing.

Mid-season rebalancing, 85-store fashion chain

Ward detects a spring jacket selling far above plan in key sizes at urban stores while sitting in suburban locations. At current velocity, the hot sizes will stock out well before end of season. Ward recommends inter-store transfers from underperforming locations to high-velocity stores, recovering full-price sales that would otherwise become end-of-season markdowns.

Signals · POS by style-size-color-store-day, current store and DC inventory, planned receipts and PO ETAs, e-commerce demand by zip, and end-of-season selling-window context.

Three pitfalls Ward catches
in fashion stockout.

  • 01 A style at 82% chain sell-through can be 100% out on size M while size XL sits at 40%, chain averages hide the broken assortment that defines a customer's in-store experience.
  • 02 E-commerce inventory pools are counted at the chain level but allocated by warehouse, so "in stock" online routinely cancels because the assigned DC ran dry.
  • 03 Pre-season size curves are set from prior-year history and rarely re-run mid-season, locking in a misread on emerging size demand.

How Ward runs stockout
for fashion retailers.

  1. 01

    Track velocity at style-size-color-store grain

    Ward establishes per-SKU velocity benchmarks by store cluster and selling week, then projects time-to-stockout per size.

  2. 02

    Recommend inter-store transfers

    Cards flag styles where transfers from slow stores to hot stores recover at-risk full-price sales, with the freight cost-benefit calculated.

  3. 03

    Feed back into next-season size curves

    Recurring size demand misreads (size M consistently under-allocated in urban cluster) become a calibration input for the next pre-season buy.

What a Ward card looks like.

app.getward.ai Live demo
Acme Apparel @Merchandising: Planning Analyst claude-sonnet default
A

Chat

Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.

Why is fall denim sell-through behind plan?
You · 9:42 AM
Schema Scout · routed to Merchandising Agent

I pulled fall denim against last season’s curve at the same selling week. Two causes, both still fixable this week.

SignalFinding
sell_throughWeek 6 sell-through 38% vs. 52% plan, concentrated in 3 of 9 door clusters
size_curveWaist 30–32 sold out in 41 doors while 36–38 sits at 71% on hand
markdown.ladderFirst markdown is 3 weeks later than LY, weeks-of-supply now 11.4

Recommend: transfer 30–32 out of the 12 overstocked doors, hold the ladder on core indigo, and take the first markdown on light wash now while it still clears at 20%.

9 parallel queries 3 sources cited confidence 0.89
Draft the size-curve transfer list.
You · 9:43 AM
Allocation Agent · drafting transfer list
Querying sell_through_weekly
Ask anything, Ward routes to the right agent. Cmd+K

Dashboards

Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries.

Revenue vs. plan +3.1% WoW
Full-price mix −5.1pp
Sell-through, fall denim 38% wk6
Markdown rate +2.8pp

Sources

Connect external systems to the data lake.

NameTypeLast sync
shopify_orders_dailyimport2m ago
shopify_returns_reasonsimport2m ago
netsuite_inventory_snapshotimport14m ago
cegid_store_salesimport1h ago
retail_size_curve_actualsimport1h ago
retail_markdown_ladderimport1h ago
retail_ga4_website_dailyimport1h ago

Policies

Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.

TLS 1.3 AES-256 Read-only SOC 2 II
Policy IDEffectResources
merch-read-defaultpermitModel::*
finance-read-markdownpermitModel::"markdown_ladder"
vendor-blockedforbidModel::"labor_*"
ecom-read-returnspermitModel::"returns_reasons"
Stockout for Fashion, live product demo.

Fashion stockout:
the shift.

Without Ward
Found in the quarterly review. Weeks after the damage is done.
  • ×Markdown timing
  • ×Size curve misallocation
  • ×Style velocity prediction
With Ward
Caught this morning. Root cause attached. Action recommended.
  • Reduce lost sales by catching gaps early
  • Automated replenishment recommendations
  • Supplier-aware lead time modeling

Fashion KPI impact.

Markdown Rate
Shallower, earlier
Slow movers detected before deep clearance is the only option.
Sell-Through
More at full price
Style velocity cards flag underperformers early enough to reallocate.
Size Accuracy
Fewer size gaps
Size curves recalibrated by store cluster and season.

Ward requires at least 2 full selling cycles to baseline style velocity and markdown timing. Results vary between basics and trend-driven categories.

Questions about fashion stockout.

Fashion stockouts are invisible, they show up as "size not available," not "product missing," and the POS never records the lost sale. Ward monitors sell-through velocity by style-size-color-store and detects when popular size runs are depleting faster than replenishment can cover within the remaining selling window.

Ward detects a spring jacket selling far above plan in key sizes at urban stores while sitting in suburban locations. At current velocity, the hot sizes will stock out well before end of season.

Requires style-size-color velocity tracking, sell-through benchmarking against plan, inter-store inventory visibility, and time-remaining-in-season context. Ward also flags recurring size curve inaccuracies as a planning problem distinct from replenishment.

First stockout insight cards arrive within 48 hours. Stable fashion baselines form within two weeks.

Fashion retailers: see what stockout problems Ward catches.

Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.

Read-only to start · your LLM keys · SOC 2 Type II underway · or book a call directly

Find out what your data has been hiding.

Tell us about your operation. We’ll show you the problems Ward catches, and the ones your current tools miss.

Step 1 of 3
What are your goals?
Step 2 of 3
About your operation
Step 3 of 3
Your contact info