What is the Difference Between Planning and Designing...???

Seriously? How is that even a question?

It is, of course, an easy question. Planning is Data. Design is Creativity. Planning is Left Brain. Design is Right Brain. Basically…they are completely different functions. But both are integral to the process of product development. Both are integral to the execution of a Brand Promise. How then does a brand or retailer reconcile and fuse Planning and Design? How do Planning and Design talk to each other? What is the process for Listening & Learning…to and from each other? Do both planners and designers attend weekly best seller meetings along with the buyers? Who asks WHY something is a best seller? Who answers…anybody? How does the designer know what product attribute(s) to go forward with? Who helps the designer avoid worst sellers?

If Planning is pure Left Brain and Design is pure Right Brain, what’s the common language so that everybody is on the same page? How does everybody understand their role in the process of achieving a common goal? And who plays Solomon in the process of merging planning and design into an action plan?

What comes first, planning or design? The answer here will be in the context of mall-based apparel retail, not the runway. This is not about Lady Gaga’s next outfit for the Grammy’s. This is not an open-ended process. There is a Brand Promise in place and the Brand Promise creates boundaries.

The graphic above puts planning in front of design. And there are now readers recoiling at that premise. I’ll explain.

Planning is living in the world of Data. Which is not to say that planning is simple number crunching. It’s not. It involves a lot of critical thinking, not the least of which is to answer the question “WHY?”. WHY was “A” a best seller and “B” a worst seller? And that is sometimes not an answerable question. But the planning process goes on, with the question of WHY? answered or not. The planner can finish the process of creating a purely data-driven plan, whether it is for OTB or product development. And it will be wrong…until they spend some time with design.

Designers of course have their own creative process. It’s separate and parallel to a planner’s process. And I will submit that it too starts with Learning/Discovery + Analysis. It just has nothing to do with numbers…initially. It’s sensory. It’s instinct. It’s observation. It’s competitive shopping. It’s research in the yarn and fabric market. It is drawing upon life experiences. All of which are Learning.

After Learning, what do designers Know? They know what they like, and they know what they feel. It may not be numbers or data driven, but it is as real to them as an Excel spreadsheet is to a planner. So for a designer, maybe it’s more accurate to say they Feel than it is to say they Know.

And after Feel, do designers Plan? No, they edit. An expansive range of colors comes down to a specific palette. An array of fabrics comes down to specific weights and textures and handfeels. Books and books of trim ideas whittle down to the important few. Walls full of graphic ideas are narrowed.

Designers might look at the process more as:

LEARN FEEL EDIT SOLVE EXECUTE LEARN

There is a point then that planners KNOW and PLAN while designers FEEL and EDIT. What is the exchange process, the conversation between the two? The planner sees a category trending up according to the numbers. That’s the snapshot of history and the current moment. What does the designer FEEL? The trend is in early stages or late stages? Pre or post peak? Chase and maximize or take the foot off the gas and move on? We are now GUESSING! And that’s OK! That’s the world we live in! Let’s not pretend we KNOW everything.

And now the designers Solve/Design + Develop the full range of customer choices, category by category. The design process is informed by at least two things. The Brand Promise and the Plan as developed by the Planning team. Depth and breadth by category. Price points. Flow by month. Risk considerations. Margin considerations.

At the Execution level the process is handed off to Sourcing/Supply Chain, Operations/Distribution and Stores. And the instant new product hits the floor, the Learning (and EVOLVING) process starts all over.

I started this short article by asking about the difference between planning and designing. Which of course is a silly question. But it is not silly to ask how planning and design are managed and intertwined and fused to produce an outcome consistent with alignment between the customer and the Brand Promise. The one-word answer to that question is MERCHANDISING. Merchandising is the fusion of planning and design. It’s alchemy. It’s art + science. Left Brain + Right Brain.

Merchandising = Managed Creativity.

#business #planning #merchandising #apparelindustry #merchants #retail #merchandisingmetrics #designmetrics #designbuild #insight #planninganalytics #designing #retailing #retailsolutions #wholesaling #retailers #thinksmart #thinkaboutit #thinkbeyond #creativethinking #creativesolutions #merchandiseplanning #assortmentplanning #processimprovement #process #retailer #retailmanagement #solutionfocused #solutionarchitect #plan #manage #teamwork #communicatio

n