THE BOON BLOG

Practical insights to help you scale sustainably & sleep easy.

Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

Why Brands Hire Boon: A Human-Led, Expert Approach to Inventory Planning

At Boon, we’re not just about demand planning—we’re about making meaningful connections and creating a positive impact on both our clients and our team

When you work with Boon, you benefit from the collective expertise of our entire staff. With over 150 years of combined experience, our team brings a wealth of knowledge to your use case from various industries. Our innovative approach to inventory management ensures that your business can thrive while we handle the complexities of merchandise planning.

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Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

How Much Inventory Should You Hold? Weeks of Supply, Open-to-Buy & Stock Levels Explained

Finding the right back stock count for your business isn’t an exact science. It’s a question that can easily keep you up at night…not to mention cost you thousands (maybe millions?!) of dollars. Like so many things when it comes to demand planning, it’s a bit more complicated than a one-size-fits-all answer, but we’ve compiled some best practices for inventory planning right here.

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Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

Q4 Inventory Planning Checklist: How to Prepare Early for Holiday Demand

Holidays in June?! In retail, the earlier you start planning for the holiday season, the more set up for success you’ll be. (Sorry, procrastinators—but waiting on this one could drastically harm your business!) Is your business ready for the holiday season? Here’s a checklist of demand planning and inventory forecasting steps you need to take.

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Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

How Pricing Impacts Inventory: A Guide to Setting Profitable Product Prices

While there’s no perfect one-size-fits-all formula to setting a pricing strategy, there are a number of factors to consider before finalizing that price tag. Below we dig into all the factors to take into consideration before pricing your product, so you find your profits in the black and your excess inventory in perfect balance.

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Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

How to Reduce Excess Inventory: Strategies to Improve Cash Flow and Reduce Dead Stock

In this article, we’ll explore the most common mistakes that lead to excess inventory, along with solutions for recouping as much of your lost cost as possible. But if you take nothing else away from this article, we hope it’s the fact that excess inventory doesn’t have to be an inevitability. With the right sales and planning tools, you can confidently plan for seasonal sales, analyze inventory data, and recap performance efficiently, so you never wake up in a cold sweat again!

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Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

What Is Demand Planning? A Complete Guide for Retail & DTC Brands

Anyone in retail will tell you, demand planning is an essential function to master—so much so, that it can make or break your business.

Demand planning is a process used by businesses to prepare for customer demand while minimizing excess inventory and disruptions to its supply chain. In its simplest terms, demand planning is your best educated guess of how much product you will sell to your customers.

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Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

7 Real Examples of How Fractional Demand Planning Support Transforms Growing Brands

When you’re getting a new business off the ground, it feels like at any moment, the next expense could bankrupt you.

At every turn, it feels like somebody is trying to get a piece of your profit, but you know that there’s also some truth to the old adage, “You’ve got to spend money to make money.” At Boon, we’re intimately familiar with what it’s like during those crucial early stages and know that bringing on a consultant can feel like an extravagance. If you know you need help with your sales and merchandise planning, but are worried the cost may outweigh the benefits, we’re here to prove that expert support can take your profit to the next level.

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Lauren Hopps Lauren Hopps

3 Reason Why Brands Outsource Inventory Planning: Real Ways Expert Support Accelerates Growth

With the new year comes a lot of reflection on where your business has been and where you’re hoping it's headed. For all of us at Boon, we’re thinking about the amazing businesses we’ve helped grow since 2017 and which future clients are set for explosive growth next. From helping businesses launch their product in national chains to supporting teams through internal change, we’ve seen it all when it comes to inventory and sales planning. Is 2024 the year we help you take things to the next level?

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Lilly Zaborowski Lilly Zaborowski

From Guesswork to Control: Why Scaling Brands Rely on Open-to-Buy Planning

As brands scale, inventory decisions get harder — and more expensive to get wrong.

Sales rarely follow plan. Forecasts drift. Suddenly you’re either sitting on excess inventory tying up cash, or scrambling to restock bestsellers you didn’t buy enough of. For many growing retail and DTC brands, this tension shows up as reactive purchasing, unreliable forecasts, and constant second-guessing of buy decisions.

Open-to-buy planning is designed to solve exactly this problem.

An open-to-buy (OTB) plan connects your sales forecast, inventory levels, and purchasing strategy into a single, living view. It helps you adjust buys as demand changes — before overstocks, stockouts, or cash-flow issues derail the business.

In this post, we break down how open-to-buy planning works, the inventory and forecasting metrics behind it, and why scaling brands rely on OTB to replace guesswork with control as complexity grows.

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