How AI is Helping Fashion Merchandisers Make Smarter, Faster Decisions

By Benito Zaccone, CEO & Co-founder of Intuendi

In fashion, delivering the right product at the right moment is everything, but also, it’s never been harder to get right. 

I’ve spent the last several years working closely with fashion companies across Europe and the US, and what I’ve consistently heard from buyers and merchandisers is that the job has never been more complex. 

Demand is more unpredictable, customer tastes are more volatile, and there is relentless pressure to launch new products, fast and frequently.

At Intuendi, our mission is to empower fast-growing companies, including those in the fashion industry, to meet these challenges head-on, using a combination of AI and human insight to support better decision-making across the buying and distribution lifecycle.

Let’s walk through what that looks like in practice.

The Buying Phase: Making the best bet a year in advance

One of the most challenging aspects of fashion is that you need to plan, purchase and stock your product line almost a year ahead.  

In fashion, forecasting starts long before buyers place their orders. Merchandisers begin building forecasts during the collection development phase, when products exist only as prototypes, and have no sales history. Once the collection is presented in sample form, the sales campaign and buying begins. 

How can a fashion company forecast the sales of a new product? 

I’ve personally been in meetings with seasoned planners at luxury fashion houses where forecasts for the same product differed drastically from one person to another. It wasn’t that anyone was necessarily wrong, some predictions simply turned out to be more accurate than others. The reality is, forecasting demand for a new product remains one of the most complex challenges in the fashion industry. With no historical data to rely on, you’re essentially making an educated guess about what consumers will want a year from now, while trends, preferences, and market conditions can shift in entirely unpredictable ways.

Ok, so which data and metrics do fashion buyers use to forecast sales of products with no history of sales? 

Unlike other industries, fashion companies can’t survive on heritage products alone. Newness drives relevancy. 

While many companies rely heavily on carryover products, especially when certain styles become iconic or consistent bestsellers, no brand can opt out of the high-stakes game of launching new models in the hope they’ll become the next season’s standout. Trends evolve, and brands aim not only to follow them, but to anticipate or even influence them. This dynamic applies across all market segments and customer personas. And a significant portion of the budget, time, resources, investment, and marketing is poured into navigating this inherent uncertainty.

The complexity arises when you realize analyzing and forecasting the demand for a product is not just a matter of style. Guessing wrong when it comes to sizing, assortment, or quantity can mean missed targets, excess stock or lost sales.

This is exactly where smart tools like Intuendi come in. 

Our strategy is simple: learn from the past, but through a qualitative lens. Thanks to the capabilities of AI, we can now analyze the historical performance of products with similar attributes, such as style, fabric, function, color, size, and more. Additionally, we can use that data to forecast the potential success of new items. This approach combines the power of AI-driven modeling with human expertise to deliver more accurate, nuanced forecasts. And it becomes even more sophisticated when we incorporate external factors that influence demand, such as pricing strategies and marketing investments.

How does AI forecasting work?

Let’s move to the practical side: our Product Comparison tool leverages our Intuendi AI to compare new items with similar products that already have a history of sales and sales data to analyse and feed to the algorithm. 

We analyze product attributes like category, material, color, seasonality, and price to detect similarities to new products and then can forecast demand for the new product based on that similar product’s historical demand data and future trends. 

Why is this so valuable? Over the years, we’ve collaborated with numerous fashion companies and observed firsthand just how large and complex their product catalogs can be, often encompassing tens of thousands of items, not including size and color variants. Even when merchandising teams focus only on top-level categories, analyzing historical sales data to generate meaningful insights for future planning remains a time-consuming and resource-heavy task. When done manually or in spreadsheets (which often crash under the weight of this volume), the process can take weeks. With Intuendi’s AI-powered platform, it now takes just minutes to deliver faster, more accurate forecasts at scale.

To give you an idea, a leading Italian fashion brand used our AI to compare around 300 new styles with similar products from previous seasons. When compared with the manual analysis performed by their visual merchandising team, our AI models reached an 82% overlap in similar item detection. That’s not just a technical success, it’s a massive time-saver and a strong foundation for smarter buying.

What are the benefits for fashion brands and retailers?

Long story short, the use of AI in forecasting brings significant benefits across the entire product lifecycle. 

Before buying, AI can help product teams shape new collections and styles by assessing their commercial potential before they even hit the market. 

During buying, it supports buyers in making data-driven decisions on the right quantities to purchase by size, color, and fabric, reducing the risk of over- or under-stocking. 

And during the sales period, AI optimizes merchandise allocation across channels and markets, ensuring that each product reaches the right customers at the right time, maximizing sell-through and profitability.

The Distribution Phase: Inventory that works smarter

Once a season begins, the focus shifts. Now it’s about keeping inventory as healthy and agile as possible. You need to continuously monitor store and warehouse performances, as well as shift stock between locations. This can be a weekly or even daily task as it’s often based on real-time data.

This is where metrics like sales velocity become critical. We help Intuendi clients monitor their sales velocity by easily calculating, for example, the ratio of units sold in the last 15 days versus the last 30 days. With that input, our AI Assistant, Symphonie, recommends how to reallocate stock across your supply chain, from central warehouses to individual stores.

Our optimization tools don’t just suggest what to move, they tell you why, and they let you tweak the logic. That’s part of our philosophy at Intuendi: our AI will assist you, but you stay in full control of your forecast, plan and orders. We give you the visibility and information you need to make smarter, more confident decisions.

Will AI replace specialised fashion professionals?

No, AI won’t replace you, the human in this role. Our goal at Intuendi isn’t to replace human intuition, but instead to strengthen it, to give you the data you need to back up your gut-instincts and your decisions. Fashion is a human-driven industry, shaped by the creativity, intuition, and decisions of designers, manufacturers, distributors, retailers, and customers. When it comes to trends, taste, and creative direction, human sensibility remains central. But it doesn’t have to work alone. Now, the human touch can work brilliantly alongside the insights provided by a platform like Intuendi, creating a powerful collaboration between instinct and intelligence.

Better forecasts, better margins, more sustainable operations

Whether you’re launching a new line, or fine-tuning store allocations, Intuendi gives fashion planners and merchandisers like you more confidence in every decision. Instead of relying on gut instincts, our clients are able to test scenarios, compare options and forecast with clarity and confidence.

Fashion will always have an element of unpredictability. That’s part of what makes it exciting. At Intuendi, we believe our AI-powered technology can make that unpredictability manageable, and yes, even profitable. What we offer is more than just automation. It’s a new rhythm for fashion businesses, one where planning is proactive, not reactive.

If you’re ready to bring more intelligence to your merchandising and buying strategies, we’re here to help. Together, we can make merchandising, procurement and forecasting feel as intuitive as your best instincts, but enriched by AI. We’re here to support you in making smarter, more confident decisions.

Do you have any questions?

Contact us or reach out to Benito and Intuendi team