Line Plan

Line plan (noun) — the numeric architecture of a season’s line: option counts by category, price tier and delivery, with the planned units, price points and margin each of those cells carries. It is agreed before the styles exist; the line board visualizes it, and the line sheet eventually sells what the board became.

The plan and the board describe the same range at two levels. The plan states how many options a cell holds — Better tops in the second drop, say — and what units and margin that cell owes; the board decides which bodies and colors fill those slots and shows whether the result reads as a range. Each pushes back on the other: a board that outgrows a cell is asking the plan for units, and a plan that cannot fund the request is telling the board to swap rather than add. The two only agree when both are counted in the same unit, which in apparel is the style-colorway. Outside apparel the unit moves with the vertical — a style-colorway committing a run of pairs in footwear, a shade within a franchise in beauty, a model in a finish or fabric in home and furniture, a design in a metal in jewelry — so the plan states its unit in its header, and a count without one cannot be checked against the board.

The plan sits upstream of the assortment plan and the buy. It sets breadth; the assortment plan decides which channels, clusters and doors each locked option goes to and how deep; the buy turns planned units into quantities. The term is also used in a wider sense that includes the style list itself, which makes the plan the agreement on what the collection contains. This glossary uses the narrower sense — the numeric envelope the styles are built into — because it keeps the plan and the board separable.

Illustrative example, not a benchmark: a knit-tops category handed 9,000 receipt units that plans 10 Good options at 420 units each, 11 Better at 300 and 6 Best at 250 has a line plan of 27 options whose units sum back to 9,000. The board is where those 27 counted slots become specific cards, and the line review is where the counts lock.

Also called: range plan
Used by: Merchandise planning owns it, with merchandising and finance; design builds to it and proposes against it.
Used during: Before range building starts, reconciled with design’s proposal through development, and locked at the line review.
Inputs: The category sales plan and margin target, carryover candidates, the price architecture, the drop or delivery calendar, fabric and factory minimums, and channel requirements.
Output: Locked option counts by category, price tier and delivery with planned units, inherited by the assortment plan and the buy.

In use

“The line plan gave Better eleven options at three hundred units each; design brought twelve, and the twelfth went to the reserve list.”