Improving Supply Chain Management in a Fashion Retail Company Using Category Management Technologies

In today’s market the absence of the adequate and transparent product management system in network retail may become critical in terms of the supply chain management effectiveness, especially when we are talking about companies that have dozens of suppliers, hundreds of trade points and tens of thousands of items in assortment. In addition, the lack of the proper information and analytical support for supply chains slows down the process of managerial decision making and does not increase their effectiveness. The purpose of the present work is to develop the methodological recommendations for improving supply chain management processes of a fashion retail company using the concept of category management. On the example of a specific company the algorithm of the effective category management is considered; this algorithm also may be used for similar projects in the fashion segment. Besides, the category management assessment system and the system of its information and analytical support are proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed solutions is justified using the DuPont model.