Sales reporting, analysis and more
Contemporary jewellery brand, Astrid & Miyu
We supported Astrid & Miyu to harness the power of merchandising for their brand. Through sales reporting, analysis, planning and training, the brand has now embedded merchandising within its day-to-day operations – and its team!
Astrid & Miyu is a contemporary jewellery brand with a presence both on and offline.
Its USP of having piercing studios within its stores helps drive footfall and sales, with Selfridges quickly spotting its potential and bringing the brand to London and Manchester.
The company’s founder, Connie, wanted to establish more structure to support the business as it grew. She got in touch and I was excited to spend a day with the team, experiencing the brand’s incredible potential and really getting to know the business. Together, we identified three key areas to work on.
Reporting
With Shopify as a platform, we knew that there’d be a real benefit in being able to access weekly reports.
The company had access to the data needed to drive these reports, but turning it into a useful format was taking too much time. We came up with a suite of reports that make sense of all the figures, so the team can focus on making decisions based on output, potentialising their sales and profit!
Planning
Christmas is a key period for retailers, and the Astrid & Miyu team wanted us to help them plan.
We built them a full Christmas plan, drawing on lessons learnt, sales performances (last year and more recent) and the team’s knowledge of their business. It includes:
Key Performance Indicators (including sales, markdown and profit)
Category Mix with Open to Buy, planning out each product category and helping to drive out their OTB (the amount of money they have to spend).
Weekly Stock, Sales & Intake, allowing them to plan by week to ensure they have the right stock to hit their sales.
Range Plan, their brand’s ‘Shopping List’, complete with automated analysis.
Training
New tools are great, but it’s important to know how to use them!
We worked with Astrid & Miyu’s in-house team to help them understand their planning and reporting, and show them how to interpret their new tools. This bespoke training worked around their individual needs and budget, delivering great value.
Support
Normally, there’s an entire team working on merchandising for big retail businesses. When we started working with them, Astrid & Miyu did have a merchandising team, but they needed more experienced support with analysis, reporting and training to supplement their activity.
Working with us meant they could be confident they’d have enough of their best seller and wouldn’t find themselves working through a mountain of excess stock. They reached a place where they could be confident that they had a balanced range that covered what their customer wanted, at the right price and the right time.
Sarah created a personalised set of tools to help us manage our growth better. She produced a simple merchandising solution that’s easy to understand and integrates well with our existing systems. We’ve experienced great support throughout the process, as well as professional in-depth training provided by both Sarah and Kathryn, and we look forward to continuing to work with them.”
—SHANI OSLERNE, ASTRID & MIYU’S HEAD OF OPERATIONS
The story doesn’t end there… so what happened next?
Good things happened next! As Astrid & Miyu grew, they decided it was time to focus more on merchandising and bolster their in-house team. Connie asked us to help with the recruitment process, first for a Merchandising Manager, and later for a Product and Operations Director.
Between the two roles, we were involved in reviewing CVs, giving feedback and contributing to the interview, assessment and selection of candidates. For both positions we created interview questions, tasks or presentations to assess their merchandising knowledge and skills. And in both cases, the individuals recruited were so successful that they’ve been promoted even further within the business!
We’re excited to keep working with the Astrid & Miyu team and help them drive their business even further.
