A fashion Head of Procurement running stockout on Looker
A fashion Head of Procurement on Looker should not be hunting for stockout problems. Ward surfaces them daily.
Stockout Prediction for Fashion on Looker, scoped to procurement
A Fashion & Apparel operator is tracking 15,000+ SKUs over locations. Seasonal sell-through, size curve optimization, and markdown timing. Ward monitors style velocity and flags slow movers before the window closes.
Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract. Ward sends daily cards scoped to procurement decision-making.
What stockout prediction does: Ward detects SKUs trending toward zero-on-hand and alerts your team with replenishment recommendations before customers notice.
How Ward hands you Stockout cards: Ward analyzes sell-through velocity, current inventory levels, lead times, and supplier reliability to predict stockouts 24-72 hours before they occur.
Setup: Ward can query Looker via API or connect directly to the underlying database. Either way, Ward monitors while your team browses.
What you get
- Supplier-aware lead time modeling
- Priority ranking by revenue impact
- Reduce lost sales by catching gaps early
- Automated replenishment recommendations
Chat
Ask anything. Ward routes to the right agent and returns cited answers.
I pulled fall denim against last season’s curve at the same selling week. Two causes, both still fixable this week.
| Signal | Finding |
|---|---|
sell_through | Week 6 sell-through 38% vs. 52% plan, concentrated in 3 of 9 door clusters |
size_curve | Waist 30–32 sold out in 41 doors while 36–38 sits at 71% on hand |
markdown.ladder | First markdown is 3 weeks later than LY, weeks-of-supply now 11.4 |
Recommend: transfer 30–32 out of the 12 overstocked doors, hold the ladder on core indigo, and take the first markdown on light wash now while it still clears at 20%.
sell_through_weekly…
Reporting
Pinned views built from saved data-lake queries. Every number re-derivable from its SQL.
| Model | Horizon | MAPE |
|---|---|---|
holt_winters | 4wk | 4.1% |
arima_sarimax | 13wk | 8.9% |
gbm_demand | 1wk | 2.1% |
bayes_hier | new store | 11.4% |
Sources
Connect external systems to the data lake.
| Name | Type | Last sync |
|---|---|---|
shopify_orders_daily | import | 2m ago |
shopify_returns_reasons | import | 2m ago |
netsuite_inventory_snapshot | import | 14m ago |
cegid_store_sales | import | 1h ago |
retail_size_curve_actuals | import | 1h ago |
retail_markdown_ladder | import | 1h ago |
retail_ga4_website_daily | import | 1h ago |
Policies
Browse and manage Cedar access policies for your tenant.
| Policy ID | Effect | Resources |
|---|---|---|
merch-read-default | permit | Model::* |
finance-read-markdown | permit | Model::"markdown_ladder" |
vendor-blocked | forbid | Model::"labor_*" |
ecom-read-returns | permit | Model::"returns_reasons" |
Why Stockout matters for Fashion retail
Fashion stockouts are invisible, they show up as "size not available," not "product missing," and the POS never records the lost sale. Ward monitors sell-through velocity by style-size-color-store and detects when popular size runs are depleting faster than replenishment can cover within the remaining selling window.
What Ward has eyes on.
Coverage is store by store, category by category. Ward scans continuously sell-through rate, markdown %, return rate over 15,000+ SKUs and compares each store against its own baseline, not against the chain. That is the difference between knowing the estate is fine and knowing which seven locations are not.
Ward reads Looker rather than replacing it. Looker API for query results, underlying database (direct), lookML model metadata come across on a read-only connection, get enriched with contextual data, and come back as cards. Your BI is untouched.
The stockout model runs each day, not on a reporting calendar. It picks up the pattern, accounts for the driver, and attaches the next step before the number reaches a review deck.
At the metric level. Requires style-size-color velocity tracking, sell-through benchmarking against plan, inter-store inventory visibility, and time-remaining-in-season context. Ward also flags recurring size curve inaccuracies as a planning problem distinct from replenishment.
Why this combination
is its own problem.
Most stockout projects stall at data access. This one does not, because Looker already exposes looker API for query results, underlying database (direct), lookML model metadata through an API Ward reads directly.
- 01 Pre-season size curves are set from prior-year history and rarely re-run mid-season, locking in a misread on emerging size demand.
- 02 A style at 82% chain sell-through can be 100% out on size M while size XL sits at 40%, chain averages hide the broken assortment that defines a customer's in-store experience.
Benchmarks. Fashion full-price sell-through targets: 60-75% by week 6, 75-85% by week 10. Broken size runs (a key size missing while others remain) typically affect 15-25% of styles in week 4 and 30-40% by week 8 without active rebalancing.
What the first 90 days
actually look like.
-
01
Week 1: read-only connection
Ward plugs into Looker / Looker Studio with read-only credentials and begins ingesting looker API for query results and underlying database (direct). No config changes on your side. First daily cards arrive within 48 hours.
-
02
Weeks 2 to 3: calibration
Baselines stabilize per store and per category. Ward stops flagging normal variance and starts flagging exceptions. This is the window where the false positive rate drops sharply.
-
03
Weeks 4 to 12: operating rhythm
Daily cards arrive each day and get triaged like any other queue. Most teams find the volume settles into something one person clears in ten minutes. What matters is the action rate, not the alert count.
How Ward connects to Looker / Looker Studio
Ward does not replace Looker. Ward watches the same data Looker visualizes and proactively alerts when something changes. Your dashboards stay. Ward adds intelligence.
Setup: Ward can query Looker via API or connect directly to the underlying database. Either way, Ward monitors while your team browses.
Data Ward reads from Looker
Impact metrics with Looker
Data lake enrichment
Ward enriches Looker data with: Looker query results, Underlying database, Weather & events, Competitor data, Customer segments
Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract.
- ×Business sponsor saw the demo. You have a week to vet a vendor you didn't pick
- ×AI vendors price by seats and tokens. Total cost is unknowable until invoice three
- ×Multi-year commits with auto-renew. No exit if the pilot stalls
- ×Renewals come back 30% higher, with no room to push back and no benchmark to cite
- ×Security and DPA reviews start after the team has already committed
- ✓MSA, DPA, SOC 2 Type II underway, and architecture review available before signature
- ✓Month-to-month contracts. No multi-year lock-in. No auto-renew traps
- ✓Transparent pricing set by scope and store count
- ✓14-day insight guarantee. If Ward doesn't deliver, month two is on us
- ✓AI strategy, orchestration and reporting-layer work in enterprise grocery at nine-figure revenue. Reference calls available before signature
Enterprise SaaS spend grew 18% YoY. 53% of subscriptions are underused or duplicative. Source: Gartner
Fashion KPI impact
Frequently asked questions
Ward detects SKUs trending toward zero-on-hand and alerts your team with replenishment recommendations before customers notice. For Fashion retail specifically, Ward monitors 15,000+ SKUs across your locations and delivers automated insight cards with root cause analysis and recommended actions.
Ward tracks Sell-through rate, Markdown %, Return rate, Style velocity, Size accuracy at the store-category level. Ward analyzes sell-through velocity, current inventory levels, lead times, and supplier reliability to predict stockouts 24-72 hours before they occur.
Ward can query Looker via API or connect directly to the underlying database. Either way, Ward monitors while your team browses. Data points include: Looker API for query results, Underlying database (direct), LookML model metadata.
Yes. Ward reads Looker data and combines it with contextual signals (weather, events, demographics) to generate Fashion-specific insight cards. No custom development required.
Merchandising wants Ward. You sign the contract. Ward solves this with automated insight cards: MSA, DPA, SOC 2 Type II underway, and architecture review available before signature. Month-to-month contracts. No multi-year lock-in. No auto-renew traps. Transparent pricing set by scope and store count.
Ward delivers daily insight cards covering Sell-through rate, Markdown %, Return rate, tailored for Procurement decision-making. Each card includes what changed, why it matters, and what to do next.
Requires style-size-color velocity tracking, sell-through benchmarking against plan, inter-store inventory visibility, and time-remaining-in-season context. Ward also flags recurring size curve inaccuracies as a planning problem distinct from replenishment.
Ward detects a spring jacket selling far above plan in key sizes at urban stores while sitting in suburban locations. At current velocity, the hot sizes will stock out well before end of season. Ward recommends inter-store transfers from underperforming locations to high-velocity stores, recovering full-price sales that would otherwise become end-of-season markdowns.
First insight cards arrive within 48 hours of data connection. Ward needs approximately 2 weeks to establish stable baselines for your specific operation.
No. Ward sits on top of your existing stack. It is the proactive intelligence layer that watches your data continuously and delivers insight cards, so your team acts on findings instead of hunting for them.
Related solutions
See what Fashion stockout problems Ward catches.
Root causes, not just alerts. See it on your data.
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