Mid-market retailers bring in Retail Planning Advisors to make their inventory and marketing dollars more productive, with senior-level planning discipline and analytics from an operator who has run both.
“George delivered an inventory plan, implemented open-to-buy controls, and taught best practices to the buying team… He became a trusted advisor.”
The Challenge
For most retailers, inventory and marketing run in separate departments, on separate numbers. The cost shows up in cash, margin, and growth.
Too much inventory overall, but not enough of the right products. Capital is trapped in slow movers while service levels suffer where they shouldn’t.
Weak visibility into future receipts, demand shifts, inventory risk, and cash commitments. Leaders are making decisions without a clear picture of where things are headed.
Aged and slow-moving inventory creates markdown exposure that dilutes category profitability and puts chronic pressure on gross margin, quarter after quarter.
Marketing dollars go out without a clear read on which customers, programs, and channels pay back. Loyalty programs grow without anyone knowing what they earn.
George seeks the right answer, not the easy one, and can think both holistically and precisely, targeting the cause of business challenges, not the symptoms.
Services
Engagements are designed for operators who need clarity, discipline, and action, not a theoretical strategy deck that sits on a shelf.
Diagnose inventory health, process gaps, reporting weaknesses, and the root causes behind missed sales, excess stock, or cash pressure. Delivers a clear view of where the business stands and a concrete picture of what needs to change.
Build the cadence, controls, and decision routines that connect sales, margin, receipts, inventory, and cash flow. OTB isn’t a spreadsheet. It’s a planning rhythm that keeps finance, merchandising, and operations aligned on the same version of reality.
Identify opportunities to improve turns, service levels, sell-through, and markdown exposure at the category level.
Assortment, pricing, and promotion decisions grounded in the numbers, so promotions drive profitable sales instead of training customers to wait for a discount. Protects gross margin without giving up the top line.
Understand which customers, programs, and marketing dollars are actually paying off.
Good decisions need one version of the truth. We build the reporting and data foundations (Power BI, SQL, cloud data warehouses) that put finance, merchandising, and marketing on the same numbers, and help define which planning tools the business actually needs before it buys them.
Approach
Most inventory and marketing problems are really planning problems. They span strategy, data, people, tools, and decision cadence. The goal is practical discipline that produces better decisions week after week.
Identify where inventory and marketing dollars are out of balance, where the data gaps are, and what’s actually driving the problem, before recommending any fix.
Build the planning framework, OTB model, customer metrics, and reporting cadence that match how the business actually operates and what leadership needs to see.
Work alongside the team to embed new disciplines into weekly operating rhythms, not just document them and hand over a deck.
Refine and strengthen the system over time, so planning becomes a repeatable capability the team owns long after the engagement ends.
Each step turns fragmented conversations about inventory and marketing into a repeatable operating rhythm leaders can trust.
Retail brands served
Client Results
George delivered an inventory plan, implemented open-to-buy controls, and taught best practices to the buying team that improved inventory productivity by over 25%. He became a trusted advisor and valuable contributor to the senior leadership team.
George brought transformational leadership and skill to inventory management, delivering significant improvements in service levels, turns and excess inventory levels. His own insights and the robust team he built were critical to our success.
George was a great partner and leader. He is extremely knowledgeable in CRM, inventory management, along with having a solid strategic approach to the business.
Let’s Talk
Retail Planning Advisors is led by George Schmidt, a senior retail operator with 30+ years of experience across inventory planning, merchandising, marketing analytics, ecommerce, and operational transformation.
Built for mid-market brands that need operator-level help without the overhead of a large consulting firm.
george@retailplanningadvisors.comInventory Planning · Open-to-Buy · Marketing Analytics · Customer Analytics · DTC · Multichannel