Fairway Stores, a department-store chain, buys Order A, 15,000 basic cotton T-shirts, from Northline Apparel, in the size ratio S:M:L:XL of 1:2:2:1. Once the season ends, Fairway Stores has a full sales history sitting in its own point-of-sale system: how fast each size sold, which stores sold it fastest, and how much stock was still unsold when markdown began. Most of what a retailer needs to know about its own customer is already inside that history. The mistake this lesson corrects is treating that history as an accounting record to file away, rather than as a description of a real customer's real preferences that should shape the next order. A buyer who reads sales history only to check whether a season "did well" misses the far more useful question: what did this season's numbers reveal about who is actually buying, and in what sizes, colours and stores.
You need: Order A's own quantity and size ratio (Course 1, Course 12), and the general idea that a retailer's point-of-sale system records what actually sold, store by store and size by size.
By the end of this lesson you can:
Not covered here: telling a genuine trend from a short-lived spike (lesson 5.2), studying a competitor's own range (lesson 5.3), and building a complete customer, trend and competitor analysis worksheet (lesson 5.4).
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Sales history | The record of what a retailer actually sold, by style, size, colour and store, over a past period. |
| Sell-through rate | The share of stock actually sold within a planned period, used to judge whether a forecast was right. |
| Size curve | The proportion of total quantity ordered in each size, meant to match how customers actually buy across sizes. |
| Markdown stock | Stock still unsold at the end of a selling period, cleared at a reduced price. |
| Customer profile | A description of who is actually buying a product, built from what the sales history shows rather than assumed in advance. |
| Store-level pattern | A pattern in sales history that appears at one or a few stores rather than across the whole chain. |
Before Order A was placed, Fairway Stores' buyers set the size ratio 1:2:2:1 based on what they expected their customer to buy. That ratio was a forecast, made with the best information available at the time, but it was still a guess about a customer Fairway Stores had not yet observed buying this exact product. Once the T-shirts are on the shop floor and selling, the point-of-sale system starts recording what customers actually choose, size by size and store by store. That recorded history is not a guess; it is the closest thing a retailer has to direct evidence of its own customer's real preference. A buyer who reads that history carefully learns more about the customer from one completed season than from any amount of planning done before the season started.
| What can differ | The shapes you will meet | Why it matters to you |
|---|---|---|
| Export retailer versus domestic brand | An export department-store chain like Fairway Stores buys finished ranges from brands such as Northline Apparel and reads its own sell-through after the goods land, like Cedar & Co.'s own domestic sales history built on its own local shop floor. | Both read sales history the same way, but an export buyer's history rarely reaches the factory directly; a domestic brand's own history usually feeds its own next MTS forecast quickly. |
| Make to Order versus Make to Stock | Order A is Made to Order: Fairway Stores commits to a fixed quantity months ahead, so this season's sales history can only inform the *next separate order*, not this one. | An MTO buyer cannot fix a poor size ratio mid-season; the value of sales history is entirely in what it teaches for the following order. |
| Chain-wide history versus store-level history | A chain like Fairway Stores can see that size M sold out in some stores while carrying stock in others, a pattern invisible in a single chain-wide total. | Reading only the chain total can hide a real difference between store locations, leading to the wrong size ratio at some stores even after the wrong signal looks fixed on paper. |
| Who reads the history | A buyer reading for the next order asks a different question than a finance team reading for stock write-off, even from the same sales history. | The same numbers support different decisions; a buyer must read for customer preference, not only for financial performance. |
By the end of the selling period, Fairway Stores' point-of-sale system shows that size M, ordered at 5,000 pieces, sold completely, with several stores requesting more stock that was never available. Size S, ordered at 2,500 pieces, still had 40% of its stock unsold when markdown began. Sizes L and XL performed close to plan. Nothing about this pattern was visible before the season started; the original 1:2:2:1 ratio was a reasonable forecast built from general experience, not from this specific customer's own recorded behaviour. The sales history now gives Fairway Stores direct evidence that its actual customer for this style skews toward size M more than the planned ratio assumed, and buys less size S than expected.
The worked numberA chain-wide total sell-through figure can look perfectly healthy even while individual sizes or individual stores are badly mismatched to demand. Order A's overall sell-through across all sizes might read as a respectable 85%, a number that gives no hint that size M sold out everywhere while size S sat in markdown at many stores. A buyer who checks only the headline total carries the same flawed size ratio into the next order, repeating a mismatch the history already explained in detail. The customer's actual preference is visible only at the level where the buying decision will actually be made: size by size, and often store by store.
Once Fairway Stores' T-shirts have been on sale for a while, the till records show exactly what customers chose: which sizes ran out, which sizes were left over, and which stores sold fastest. That record is worth more than any guess made before the season started, because it shows what real customers actually did, not what buyers expected them to do. Reading it properly means looking at each size and each store separately, not just one overall number, because a good overall total can hide a real size or store problem underneath it. The next order should be shaped by what this record shows, not by repeating the same plan simply because it was the plan last time.
Layla, a buyer on Fairway Stores' team, pulls the completed sales history for Order A across all stores. The chain-wide total sell-through reads 85%, a figure the finance team already flagged as acceptable. Layla then breaks the same history down by size and finds that size M sold out everywhere within eight weeks, with three stores logging lost sales they could not fulfil, while size S carried 40% of its stock into markdown across the chain. Nothing in the 85% total hinted at this.
Here is the note Layla prepares for the next planning meeting:
Should Layla recommend keeping the same 1:2:2:1 size ratio for the next order with Northline Apparel, or recommend a change? Decide before opening the answer.
Layla should recommend changing the size ratio for the next order, shifting quantity from size S toward size M. Two facts decide this together.
First, the 85% chain-wide total on its own would not have justified any change, since it reads as a broadly successful season with no obvious problem.
Second, the size-level history shows a real, opposite pattern hiding inside that acceptable total: size M sold out with lost sales at three stores, while size S sat unsold at 40% of its own stock, exactly the size-level mismatch this lesson's method is built to surface.
Recommending no change would repeat the same lost sales in size M and the same markdown loss in size S next season, even though the chain-wide number alone gave no warning of either.
Framed on Order A's own figures, the size S markdown loss and the size M lost-sales opportunity both carry a real cost that a chain-wide total conceals.
Neither figure would have been visible from the chain-wide 85% sell-through total alone; both come directly from reading the sales history at the size level this lesson teaches.
Open the Customer, trend and competitor worksheet linked below. Its "Sales history" sheet lists each size, the quantity ordered, the quantity sold, the resulting sell-through rate, and any store-level note worth flagging, the exact reading this lesson worked through for Order A. Fill in the yellow "Your style" column with your own sizes and figures for practice.
[Download the Customer, trend and competitor worksheet](../../templates/T19-C05-customer-trend-competitor.xlsx)
Download the Customer, trend and competitor worksheet (Excel)
1. Order A's chain-wide sell-through reads 85%, a figure finance already called acceptable. Why does this lesson say that number alone is not enough?
2. Which reading of Order A's sales history gives Layla the evidence she needs to change the size ratio?
3. A different style sells 4,000 of 4,000 ordered in size M (100%) and 900 of 3,000 ordered in size S (30%). How many size S pieces went unsold, and what is the chain-wide total sell-through across just these two sizes?
| EN | AR | FR | TR | Meaning |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sales history | سجل المبيعات | Historique des ventes | Satış geçmişi | The record of what a retailer actually sold, by style, size, colour and store, over a past period. |
| Sell-through rate | معدل البيع الفعلي | Taux d'écoulement | Satış oranı | The share of stock actually sold within a planned period, used to judge whether a forecast was right. |
| Size curve | منحنى المقاسات | Courbe de tailles | Beden dağılımı | The proportion of total quantity ordered in each size, meant to match how customers actually buy across sizes. |
| Markdown stock | مخزون التخفيض | Stock en solde | İndirimli stok | Stock still unsold at the end of a selling period, cleared at a reduced price. |
| Customer profile | ملف العميل | Profil client | Müşteri profili | A description of who is actually buying a product, built from what the sales history shows rather than assumed in advance. |
| Store-level pattern | نمط على مستوى المتجر | Tendance au niveau du magasin | Mağaza düzeyinde örüntü | A pattern in sales history that appears at one or a few stores rather than across the whole chain. |
You now know how to read a retailer's own sales history to build an accurate picture of its customer. The next lesson teaches how to tell a genuine, lasting shift in that customer's buying from a short-lived spike that will not repeat. Back to the course map