Fashion generates enormous amounts of data twice a year and reads almost none of it in time. By the time the season is analysed, the next collection has already been produced.
Units sold flatter a brand. Sell through, meaning the share of what was delivered that has actually sold, is the number that says whether a style worked. Two styles with identical sales can have completely different sell through if one shipped twice the units, and only the second number should drive the next buy.
Reading sell out on totals is how warehouses fill up with sizes nobody wants. The curve by size and colour, per store or per account, is the only version of the number that supports a reorder or a markdown decision.
Halfway through a season it is possible to calculate, style by style, what will not sell at full price at the current rate. That number is the difference between a planned markdown and a panicked one, and it is available weeks before anybody usually looks.
Return rate by style, with the reason, says which pieces run small, which colours disappoint against the photograph and which sizes need recalibrating. It is information worth having for the next collection, and it usually dies in a free text field.
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