Are you an apparel company and involved in consignment sales or interested in starting? Either way, Aria Systems consignment module enables you to efficiently manage your consignment stock, making accurate restocking easy!

A consignment constitutes a reserved selling space within a department store in which apparel companies can sell their products. The apparel company places its merchandise in this area which basically functions as a ‘shop within a shop’. Only when the goods are sold and the sale is processed does the company bill the department store for the goods – less an already agreed commission/discount. The sold stock thus triggers direct invoicing on a weekly basis.

Opening a consignment space inside a department store is increasingly attractive to brand owners. A consignment gives the holder a far greater potential footfall, as well as the opportunity to market its goods in an established environment with similar products. 

However, the allure of owning a consignment is somewhat dimmed when taking into account the difficulties that are involved with the manual management of its stock control. The manual processing of sales and inventory information inhibit merchandisers from controlling their consignment stock; causing inefficient replenishment in terms of stock shortages and the wrong stock being delivered to the wrong location. The sluggish transfer of sales information to the consignment holder will moreover trigger late invoicing and ultimately cash flow problems. Thus, the process of consignment stock control, when done manually, tends to be inaccurate and slow. In order to improve efficiency and maximize profit for apparel companies with consignments, Aria Systems developed an automated process which effectively deals with the oftentimes complicated and tedious process of consignment stock control.

The main goal of the new consignment module was to create a user-friendly and automated system in order to ensure reliable and accurate stock control. The module first of all downloads and processes the daily sales and returns data to the consignment holder electronically. In addition it raises instant invoices and credit memos back to the retailer. In order to run a replenishment routine and ensure that each consignment has the correct amount of inventory, optimum stock holdings are set per consignment. The replenishment scheme is controlled by the apparel companies’ merchandisers. By attributing a grade to the stores they can control the type and quantity of the products sent to each consignment grade. This greatly simplifies the process of replenishment, the merchandiser only has to set up the optimum stock profiles three times for any number of consignments. The consignment module moreover gives the apparel company accurate inventory and daily sales figures per consignment, it automatically replenishes inventory, and it monitors product turnover making sure the correct products are in each consignment to maximize sales. Ultimately, Aria’s consignment module provides apparel companies with an accurate, efficient, and easy method of replenishment to regulate consignment stock control.