Story #3 Size Localization Flashcards
Interview questions for size localization
- Tell me about a time when you had to work with limited time or resources. ←- Frugality
- Tell me about a time where you turned down more resources to complete an assignment. ←- Frugality
- Tell me about a time when you had a problem and you had to go through several hoops to discover the root cause. ←- Deep Dive
- Tell me about a time when you had a problem yet no one was willing to investigate since they thought it was outside their scope of ownership. ←- Deep Dive
How do I open Size Localization?
Let me tell you a story about how I went outside of my way to take ownership of a high visibility cross-product initiative, despite little time and resources available.
Whats the framework you’ll use for Size Localization?
Situation
- User
- Problem
- System
- Bad thing
- Good thing
Action
Task
Result
- Retstae the goal
- What was the quantitative result
- What was the outcome
- What could have gone better?
For size localization, who is the user?
An Old Navy Planners job is to predict the future. Predict the future about how much of an item, think a men’s jacket, the Old Navy customer is going to want to buy, in a certain size, think small, medium large, in a certain store in the country, think San Francisco.
What is the good thing that happens when a planner is able to job their job effectively?
They create a great customer experience. Picture a young professional, a man, who walks into an Old Navy store in San Francisco and is able to find the jacket he loves in the exact size that he is looking for.
What is the problem of size localization?
Heres the problem,
- Old Navy came out with a strategy called BodEquality - the idea is that select Old Navy Women’s departments will offer a larger ranges of sizes for women’s product to promote size inclusivity - which we can agree is a great thing - for example rather than just sending sizes Small through Large for an item, we’re not going to send XS through XXL to prmote size inclusivity.
- However, due to a system limitation, Old Navy Inventory Planners are only capable of sending the same range of sizes to ALL stores locations in the country - XS and XXL will be sold in all stores regardless of the customer that shops there.
Fast forward 6 months, despite Old Navy’s good intentions for this strategy,
- Old Navy is stuck with excess inventory, between over $ 50 million dollars of excess inventory in sizes like XXL and XS.
- Old Navy has an average inventory sell through by size of less than 40%.
- Because customers are different around the country, a customer in Miami shops for different sizes than a customer in Wiconsin.
Whats the bag thing that happened with size localization?
- Old Navy Planners are frustrated. They can’t execute a size strategy based on geography.
- Despite their best efforts, they are only able to send a full size range to all stores, so they cannot tailor their sizing strategy by location.
- Worst of all, the customer experience in store in not where we want it to be. In many stores across the country, we are offering sizes that the customer isn’t looking for.
How do we measure the success of size localization?
We use average sellthrough by size. Unit sales / Inventory we purchased - average by size Average sell through by size was 40%. - first month of selling We wanted to increase the average sell through by size to 60%. - first month of selling
What did you do to solve the problem? Whats the framework? Hypothesis?
Hypothesis: “What if we get to the root cause of the problem - why planners can’t define a store specific range of sizes - , so that we can enable Planners to send the right sizes the customer is looking for, to the right store location to create the great customer experience”.
Can we try and pickup 5-10% on the average sell through by size?
Can we relieve Old Navy any future margin liabilities to the tune of $50 million dollars?
Here are my actions:
- STEP 1 - Let’s to understand the the Planner workflow and the needs and painpoints. - get to the root cause of why they can’t plan for a different size ranger by location
- STEP 2- The jourey of planning for a size by location involves multiple products - What’s the ideal cross-product journey to enable localized sizing?
- STEP 3 - Rally our cross-functional teams to communicate a plan, communicate urgency and stress prioritization - delivery timelines an expectations.
- STEP 4 - Let’s build and test.
- STEP 5 - Measure results for a next phase More importantly - we have to move fast.
STEP 1 - Let’s to understand the the Planner workflow and the needs and painpoints. - get to the root cause of why they can’t plan for a different size ranger by location
High level:
- I setup a working group with a set of Old Navy Inventory Planners
- To better understand the process of planning a size range for an item, from start to finish.
- Would you like me to walk you through that process
- To understand their needs/pain points
- To better understand the process of planning a size range for an item, from start to finish.
Would you like me to walk you through these in detail?
If no, sure - my learning here was that It’s critical to get to understand the mental model of the user - what decisions and actions do they take agnostic of a system, and who else is involved.
If yes then..
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Working Group
- I gathered a working group of Old Navy Planners, subject matter experts, to understand what are the decisions, conversations, and considerations she makes when determining what sizes of an item should be sold in what store?
- Conclusion: They actually don’t make the decision, it’s the merchant who decides! But its a key Planner consideration when securing an investment/units with a vendor. We have another user involved.
-
Understanding the Merchant
- I gathered a working group of merchants to understand how they determine what sizes to offer for products.
- The merchant is informed by two major factors:
- Historical Size Selling - what has worked in the past for items of the same classification?
- Data Science Inputs - what could we have sold if we offered different sizes?
- Data Science considers:
- Size selling of similar classifications of products
- Profit Margin by size of similar classification of products
- Customer demographics and geographical sizing trends
- Data Science considers:
-
Functional Steps
- The Merchant uses our Assortment Planning platform to upload a size range (S, M, XL) and a size profile (33% across all sizes).
Merchant select publishes the profile to the Inventory Planning application so the Old Navy Planner can plan orders against it.
Summary: I used working groups of key users to get to know thier needs and pain points. We discovered that Merchant are only able to select one size range per item, so planners are only able to plan for one size range per item.
STEP 2- What’s the ideal cross-product journey to enable localized sizing?
High Level: After speaking with Old Navy Planners, Merchants, it was clear that merchants need the capability to set a size range by location (a change in one system), to select and publish a size range by location (in the assortment planning application), and to plan for a size range by location (in the Inventory Planning Management app)
Would you like me to go into more depth?
If no, - great, the summary here is that in order to enable this capability we need changes in multiples systems, and cross-product alignment as well as training and alignment with multiple business teams.
- Merchants determine what sizes should be offered by location, and how much inventory should go to each size (with the help of Data Science)
- Merchants upload the size range and size profiles by store - Merchants use Global Assortment ( A web based app they helps manage what you want to buy, where)
- Merchant is able to select a size range by store
- Merchants publish the size range and size profiles so Planners can begin to plan inventory and orders using them (publish to Inventory Planning Application)
- Planners communicate product and size intent with their vendors
- Planners create and send orders to vendors with size intent
Fast Forward - Vendors create the product, send the product to Gap, Gap sends the product by size to store locations for the customer.
STEP 3 - I took ownership to rally our cross-functional teams to communicate a plan, communicate urgency and stress prioritization - delivery timelines and expectations.
- I gathered product and tech leads from the teams that are involved in the end to end flow.
- We communicated that we have a 3 month timeframe to go:
- Review requirements
- Propose a design that makes sense cross-product
- Build
- Perform User Acceptance testing prior to delivery.
- We aligned to a delivery date
- I setup office hours for anyone that has questions
- I volunteered to lead us as the one point of contact with our business partner for the initiative
STEP 4: Build & Test
Let’s build and test:
- Took about 8 weeks to complete
- I led alignment of end to end testing use cases - collboarative effort between all cross product teams.
- I led communicaiton of key dates to the business including:
- UAT with subject matter expects
- Final delivery with Old Navy
STEP 5: Results - whats the framework for results?
- What was the goal of the conversation.
- What were the quantifiable results?
- What did I learn?
- What could I have done better?
STEP 5: Results - what were the results?
- What was the goal of the conversation.
- What were the quantifiable results?
- We were able to improve avg. sell through by size for impacted womens department from 40% to 46% in first month of sale for new items.
- We isolate the sell through of what products were bought with all sizes, versus products bought with just core sizes.
- We were able to improve avg. sell through by size for impacted womens department from 40% to 46% in first month of sale for new items.
- What did I learn?
- How to take action quickly, how to prioritize relentlessly, how to do much more with fewer resources.
- What could I have done better?
- I think I could have
