Why retail and wholesale planning is harder than it looks
Retail and wholesale each bring their own difficulties, and many businesses face both at once.
Each channel behaves differently. Retailer orders arrive in batches from their distribution centres, trade customers order on their own cycles, direct sales follow your marketing calendar, and marketplace sales depend on search position and deal events. A single combined forecast hides all of that.
Shared stock is not interchangeable. Stock in a marketplace fulfilment centre cannot fill a trade order, and stock in one region may be wrong for customers in another.
A few accounts drive a lot of volume. In wholesale, large customers often account for much of the demand, so aggregate forecasts miss what matters and key accounts need to be forecast individually.
Catalogues are large and demand is lumpy. Project timing and year-end buying create spikes, and many items sell rarely, which makes simple averages unreliable.
Data sits in many systems. Each channel reports in its own format, so sales history has to be standardised before it can be compared.