The Inventory Hangover: You Can't
Many retailers have started 2026 with a significant inventory hangover. Warehouses were bloated with the wrong stock, tying up working capital that is desperately needed for the new season.
Faced with this challenge, there is a reflexive temptation to invest in expensive new inventory management software or AI-driven allocation tools to "fix" the problem.
This is a fundamental misunderstanding of the issue. Technology is brilliant at managing the stock you have. It can track it, move it, and report on it. But no amount of software can fix the flawed human decision that bought the wrong product in the wrong quantity in the first place.
If your buying and merchandising teams lack the foundational skills to forecast accurately or structure a range effectively, new technology will simply allow you to make bad decisions faster.
Before signing off on a multi-million pound software upgrade, or an expensive AI project with uncertain returns, ensure you have invested in the commercial capability of the humans feeding the data into it. If you are not already forecasting your terminal stiock levels for the end of spring summer 2026. it's time you did. Action taking now to get the terminal stock target back on track will be a lot less costly than leaving it any longer.
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Posted by Brian Hume
6th May 2026
