INSIDE THIS POST
Every merchandiser knows the shape of it. A style sells faster than planned, or slower, and the numbers say so by week nine. The markdown that answers it is set in week fourteen, in the meeting where markdowns get set. The five weeks in between are not a mystery. They are a calendar.
The signal is in week 9
Sell-through by week nine predicts the season's end within a few points for most of the range. The styles that will miss are already visible: cumulative sell-through under the curve, full-price rate holding, stock still deep. Nobody is hiding this. It is in the weekly report, three tabs in.
Why the decision waits
Because the decision is a meeting, and the meeting has a date. Because the markdown needs a price file, the price file needs a sign-off, and the sign-off needs the person who was travelling. None of these steps is slow on its own. Together they are a season.
What a week of waiting costs
Take a style with 2,000 units left in week nine and a sell-through rate falling by a point a week. Each week the markdown waits, the depth it needs grows by two to three points. By week fourteen the same clearance costs twice the margin it would have cost in week ten. The money is not lost at the markdown. It is lost in the waiting.
Moving the decision up
The fix is not a faster meeting. It is a signal that reaches the person who can act, with the proposal already drafted, and an approval that takes a minute instead of a calendar. That is what a workflow is for: the decision you make once, so the season can make it every week.