Riding on the wave of the Melbourne Fashion Festival, today’s article will delve into out of stock problems faced by fashion retailers.

Fashion retailers are forever contending with the optimized inventory challenge. Customer preferences are clearly changing in today’s omni channel environment. They expect to have a full assortment of purchasing options across multiple channels. And they expect inventory is updated instantaneously across all the channels. Needless to say, real-time inventory management is commonly reported as one of the biggest concerns and challenges for retailers. And stock-outs – easily retailers’ worst nightmares.

“Stock-out” describes the disappointment a customer feels when they research online and the item is unavailable when they walk into store. You’re a consumer, I’m a consumer – we’ve probably all experienced it: We make the effort of physically going to the store only to discover the dreamy dress, shirt or shoes we want are not available in our size in that particular store.

This situation is problematic for both, customers and retailers for several reasons.