How Leading Brands Are Transforming Retail, Distribution, Apparel & Footwear

The retail and consumer goods landscape is shifting under our feet. Trends move faster than supply chains can react. Consumer expectations stretch higher. Margin pressure continues to mount. And behind it all sits a network of decisions (what to sell, where to place it, when to discount, and how to deliver) that must be made with greater accuracy, speed, and coordination than ever before.

This article explores how leading retailers are rising to the challenge. With intelligent, integrated, and AI-powered planning at the core, brands like Hugo Boss, Citizen Watch of America, and Pandora are rethinking how they forecast demand, manage inventory, and orchestrate supply. Their journeys offer a blueprint for what’s possible in an industry where change is the only constant.

Three main industry challenges

Every brand has its unique battles, most players in retail, distribution, apparel, and footwear face a shared trio of challenges: understanding demand, shaping the offer, and executing supply with agility.

The first challenge is demand understanding. Traditional forecasting tools, based on historical sales, fall short in a world of omnichannel complexity and volatile consumer behavior. Social media accelerates trend cycles.

Sustainability reshapes purchasing priorities. Economic conditions add unpredictability. It’s no longer enough to know what will sell—you must also know how and where customers expect fulfillment.

Adding to the complexity is the unstructured nature of “tribal knowledge.” Deep insights about what drives demand often reside in the heads of experienced merchandisers or planners rather than in systems. Digitizing this knowledge is now essential for accuracy and scalability.

The second challenge is offer shaping. Assortment, pricing, and promotion decisions must align to capture as much demand as possible. This means setting the right targets, curating the right mix, and buying at the right depth, balancing breadth with focus. Inaccurate planning here leads to missed sales, markdowns, and operational waste.

The third challenge is supply agility. Once demand is shaped, companies must respond dynamically—replenishing stock, shifting sourcing strategies, and collaborating across the value chain in real time. But disconnected systems, limited visibility, and external disruptions make this a constant struggle.

An integrated approach to planning

To address these challenges, forward-thinking companies are embracing three transformative capabilities.

• First: breaking down silos with next-generation integrated business planning. Retail decisions are deeply interconnected. Pricing influences demand. Assortment impacts supply. Markdown strategy affects brand perception. o9’s unified data model allows companies to simulate the ripple effects of any planning decision across the value chain—balancing service, cost, and revenue outcomes.
• Second: advancing hyper-automation. In a category where thousands of decisions must be made daily—from inventory reallocation to pricing triggers—manual planning cannot keep up. That’s why companies are automating routine decisions, freeing up human talent for higher-impact work.
• Third: adopting large language model (LLM)–powered AI. o9’s Enterprise Knowledge Graph contextualizes enterprise data so AI can generate relevant, decision-ready insights. This gives planners and executives faster access to information, better scenario modeling, and more intelligent responses to change.

Customer story 1: Hugo Boss

Hugo Boss is a global luxury fashion leader with a footprint that spans retail, wholesale, and e-commerce. With more than 30,000 SKUs and a growing omnichannel presence, the company faced a familiar problem: planning processes were fragmented across tools and teams. As a result, decision-making was slow, inventory bloated, and sales opportunities missed.

To fix this, Hugo Boss launched an end-to-end digital transformation strategy aimed at becoming the world’s leading tech-driven fashion company. o9’s platform now powers their unified planning—from demand and supply through to assortment and merchandising.

The impact is already taking shape: improved margins from reduced markdowns, better product availability, smarter sourcing, and leaner inventory. Most importantly, planners can now focus on what matters—running scenarios, aligning decisions, and responding quickly to customer needs.

Customer story 2: Citizen Watch of America

With thousands of SKUs and distribution across retail, wholesale, and e-commerce, Citizen Watch of America needed a smarter way to align its planning processes. Disconnected systems and manual methods created inefficiencies and hindered growth.

With o9, the brand now runs merchandise financial planning, demand planning, and advanced replenishment in one place. This has streamlined cross-functional coordination, reduced manual work, and dramatically improved forecast accuracy.

The result? Smarter inventory allocation, reduced stock levels, and millions in savings—all while improving product availability. Citizen Watch is now better equipped to scale sustainably, with a platform built for long-term agility.

Customer Story 3: Pandora

Pandora’s vertically integrated model (spanning thousands of retail points and extensive manufacturing capacity) offers a major competitive advantage. But with that integration comes complexity. Without unified planning, sales, distribution, and production processes were misaligned. High inventory levels were used to buffer uncertainty, but without visibility, that safety net became a drag on efficiency.

Pandora turned to o9 to establish end-to-end planning on a single platform. From unified demand signals to synchronized replenishment and production, the platform allows the company to respond faster, position inventory more strategically, and reduce working capital.

The benefits go beyond efficiency. By bringing planning closer to execution, Pandora is creating a more agile and connected experience for its customers—and a stronger foundation for sustainable growth.

Rethinking what’s possible

These transformations are powerful not because they replace old tools, but because they redefine how planning works across the business. From Hugo Boss’s tech-first vision to Citizen Watch’s leaner operations and Pandora’s agility advantage, each example shows how integrated planning enables stronger decisions, faster responses, and better outcomes.

What’s clear is this: in today’s retail environment, transformation is no longer optional. Companies that embrace innovation and rethink planning will not only stay competitive—they will unlock new levels of efficiency, responsiveness, and growth.

As the industry continues to evolve, the winners will be those who break down silos, automate with intelligence, and act with speed. At o9, we’re proud to partner with leaders on this journey, and excited to see what comes next.

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