What is Range Planning in Fashion - And How to Build One for Your Intimates Brand

We start the process with a beautifully designed fashion collection, whether it’s lingerie, sleepwear, swimwear or activewear, but this is only surface level work without a considered range plan. A range plan is the document or cross functional collective source of information that will hold your strategy on the what and the when for your product assortment.

SKIMS

This is why fashion designers and brand founders work with buyers, merchandisers and planners or experienced consultants. The range plan stage is an important process in building a successful fashion collection. It takes the thoughtfully designed product that the design team have worked on and allows it to be available to the right consumer at the right time, enhancing your collection to maximum profitably.

A solid collection range plan will define:

• What to sell

• Quantities to offer

• Which products to prioritise

• Timings of product drops

Think of it as the shopping list your brand cannot survive without.

A range plan is particularly important for intimates brands, as bodysuits, bras, underwear and shapewear for example all come with different sizing requirements. In particular with bra product you generally need to accommodate a band and cup size e.g. size 34 C, the size curve on a bra will always be much more diverse and extensive than say a skirt, making the range plan more complex. 

Every style, size and colour will deepen and define your inventory. SKU stands for stock keeping unit, and a SKU labels a specific combination of style, colour-way and size. For example, a knicker sold in nude in sizes, XS, S, M, L and XL creates five separate SKUs.

The goal is to balance an inspirational collection that inspires and serves your customer with the least amount of inventory left at the end of season, keeping markdown to a minimum. This can be measured through the sell though rate, the proportion of the available stock that has sold over a defined period.

Range planning for a fashion brand

A range plan for your intimates collection captures your selected and structured product assortment in a consolidated document. It will visualise:

• Product categories - which type of products are you going to sell? Lingerie sets, mix and match knickers, bodywear?

• Style assortment - how many designs will you launch in each category?

• Colour palette - which colours will be core, seasonal or online only?

• Size range or curve - very important in intimates brands, how many different types of bodies will be accommodated through this selection?

• Pricing architecture - what is the pricing you want to offer your customer? FOB cost and desired margin will determine the retail price, this can be thought about at initial creative stages and in the design brief, designing the product into a particular cost.

• Depth and Quantity - how many units will be produced per style, colour and size, for smaller brands, this can often be dictated by your manufacturer’s MOQs and MCQs.

Range plans are the blueprint for your collection, connecting the creative direction with product development, merchandising, production and fundamentally sales.

How to plan a fashion range for your intimates brand

Define your customer and brand positioning

• Be clear on who your customer is, and how you can best serve them as a brand. 

• Within intimates and bodywear, what area are you focusing on? Everyday essentials, erotic sets, performance pieces? Find your focus and make this offering clear through the product mix and marketing.

• What price range do I think my customer is comfortable paying within?

• Selling DTC or through wholesale?

Set commercial targets

• Total inventory investment

• Target margins 

• Expected sales volume and product drop timeline

• Target retail prices

Build the product category mix

Each style in your mix should have a clear reason for being present, this may be a mix of core, hero and experimental products. Always compare products within the range and check they aren’t fulfilling the same need for the customer, it is important not to split sales within your range.

There may be times where you chose to go forward with a style that is actually not profitable or you end up paying a surcharge to the manufacturer as you are not meeting the MOQ. Although this seems like an illogical choice, launching exciting or edgy styles which will act as a ‘press piece’ gaining attention in the media and a buzz on socials can often be worth it for your overall business. Viral and sell out product will give your brand a special type of marketing.

Colour Strategy

Although it feels tempting, there is no need to offer every style in every colour, workshop which styles require a core colour offering only, and which styles may warrant to be produced in the whole palette, or there may some styles that feel best in the high fashion colours of your palette.

Sizing

As we’ve previously touched on, this is a really difficult area for brands that have bras as part of their product mix. Whilst a brand selling general womenswear such as dresses, skirts and tops can place their styles into dress sizes such as 8,10,12 etc, or even alpha sizing S, M, L etc, this is impossible for wired and some non wired bras.

Through accommodating all the cup and band sizes you wish to offer for your target market, you will naturally be sat on some high inventory. When working through this with your buying or planning team or consultant, always come back to your brand strategy and how you can best serve your customer whilst remaining in budget.

Pricing Architecture

This can be developed through either cost engineered design, where a target price is given initially to the design team or design consultant for each style, or you lead with design and aesthetic choices and engineer prices later in the process. This largely depends on your customer and what you think their desired spend is. Again, bring it back to the customer and brand strategy. The overall architecture of the pricing should be strategic and each style's pricing should be relevant to the others in the collection.

Buy Quantities

Most small brands will want to start their buys small to reduce risk and avoid sitting on excess inventory, so initially this will mainly be dictated on how flexible your manufacturer is with their MOQs and MCQs. However, as brands grow and your product's demand starts to surpass the minimum orders, you will then need to work through each style and decide on the correct unit quantity based on colours, sizing and sales history, you should also consider trend at this stage too. Listen to your designer or design consultant, will there be particular trend you need to buy more heavily into? A very simplistic example of this would be strapless bras in the spring and summer months.

Launch Drops

Not every product has to arrive at the same time.

It is a good idea to launch with hero products that cement the brand identity, after the initial drop you can follow up with further colour-ways and complimentary silhouettes. Learn from customer behaviour and preferences before expanding the range widely.

Learn from your stock too, test and replenish. Test small quantities at relevant times with particularly new product and replen on best sellers, but never be complacent with a best seller. What will make the customer buy it again, an update in the correct seasonal colour or a small update?

Sign off plan prior to production

Review the range plan before moving to production and sign it off with your cross functional partners or consultants. It is important to have both a commercial and creative outlook when doing this.

• Does the range reflect your brand identity and positioning?

• Does it serve your intended customer?

• Are price point consistent and fit with your intended place in the market?

• Does the total inventory sit in your budget?

• Is your critical path and MOQs realistic?

• Can you replenish successful product to a level where it doesn’t affect cash flow?

Range plan template for lingerie brands

There are many free documents online to help you create your own range plan, however you many find more ownership if doing this for the first time, by creating it in a programme like Excel or Google Sheets yourself.

What is needed in a range plan depends on your type of product but for lingerie and intimates brands, below is a good framework to start with to establish your rows or columns:

• Range name

• Style code

• Style name

• Image - CAD or inspirational image of style

• Cup used

• Colours

• Size range

• Retail price

• Unit cost

• Planned units

• Target margin

• Supplier name

• MOQ and MCQ

• Delivery date

• Development status

• Additional comments

Tips for successful range planning 

• Considered designs at the beginning of the process with an awareness of cost requirements.

• SKU awareness, a handful of SKUs can generate many sellable variants, be aware of the inventory you may be creating by having too many SKUs in your collection.

• Customer research, always think about your customer and use evidence, don’t just follow industry standards to make choices in sizes, colour or price.

• Consider each product and their reason for being, does it warrant a deeper buy or a press piece that has a low margin, but has a good chance of going viral on socials?

• Learnings! Track everything and gain insights for your future ranges, this is invaluable and you will be grateful for this intel as your brand grows.

We’re going to finish this article with a quote, whilst recently chatting with a planning expert in the activewear industry about range plans, she described their fundamental purpose in a lovely, digestible summary:

“It’s about covering off your best seller, building on success of new reads and leaving a little bit of space for the unknown so design can do what they do best.”

Studio Nu can support your brand with range plans, and the rest of your brand’s journey to deliver a successful collection. Our Vision to Collection package and Vision to Production package offer range plan expertise and guidance.