Scenarios for Cronus Fashion Retailers

The Cronus Fashion Retailers are opening a chain of fashion boutiques in London as an addition to their boutiques in Liverpool and Lancaster. At the same time, they are implementing LS Central for their boutiques in London, which includes using existing data from their old system in Liverpool and Lancaster.

The Cronus boutique concept is to have many small locations in fashionable parts of London, but not necessarily in the most expensive areas. This means that the distance between locations is considerable and that affects inventory management. All locations are small with only one up to three POS terminals in each boutique and constant access to the company’s warehouse that has limited space. They have built up an extremely flexible selection of relatively low-priced fashion clothes (prêt-a-porter) and clothes from young designers that are willing to sell their products at affordable prices. The Cronus fashion boutiques pride themselves in having an outstanding selection of clothes and new clothes in the boutiques at least twice a week, but only a few in each size and style. This calls for effective distribution.

The first step is to complete the core configuration in Retail Setup:

Click the icon, enter Retail Setup, and select the relevant link.
Fill in the necessary setup values:

After you have tilled in the card, the rest of the process is mostly straightforward, but there are a few things that are of special interest to the Cronus chain.

For each different item, there is a procedure that has to be followed and the aim is to maintain the stocks with as little effort as possible with effective use of barcodes. Tools that enable good inventory setup and management are essential for this. Ms. Lilith Romero is the Cronus-chain's computer specialist and she has put a lot of effort into planning how to use the LS Central system to the utmost to meet the demands of the store managers who do not tolerate much delay when they are selling the latest fashion that they claim will change “tomorrow”. The Cronus boutique in Kilburn is the first boutique Lilith sets up in the LS Retail system in London. They also sell cold real fruit drinks in bottles to keep the customers inside a bit longer.

The Cronus boutiques plan to use the option “Open to Buy” to keep as wide a selection as possible in the warehouses without taking up too much space there. Right now, they are building up a body of knowledge regarding the sales and using old data to use the information there. By using last year's information effectively with a possibility of constant revision, the “Open-to-Buy” option is one of their most important tools. The data from the old system in Liverpool and Lancaster is entered into an Excel document (with the increases of sales expected in each boutique, 1.2) and then used in the Open-to-Buy until the actual sales figures from the first months are available. Then Open-to-Buy is used to compare the data imported from the Excel document to the actual sales.

For the items sold in the first Kilburn boutique, Lilith has to do the following:

Set up Item Division, a feature that is optional but used for “Open-to-Buy” and some reports that the Cronus fashion retailers are planning on using in the long run to have a good overview over their fast-expanding business.
Item Categories are one of the mandatory features and define the broadest of the categories that the items are divided into. At the Cronus boutiques, there are only a few categories, the main being: Clothes, Shoes, and Accessories, all belonging to the Item Division Nonfood and Beverages that are part of the Food Item Division. Lilith also uses the Rental option since the Cronus boutiques have a limited selection of bridal dresses for rent.
Retail Product groups are next in line and the groups Lilith uses are Women's, Young Women's, Teens, Fruit juices, and Soft drinks.
Variants. It is possible to have up to six combinations of variants for each item regarding colors, sizes, style, and temperature (for instance hot and cold).