Sales forecasting in apparel and fashion industry: A review

Abstract

The fashion industry is a very fascinating sector for the sales forecasting. Indeed, the long time-to-market which contrasts with the short life cycle of products, makes the forecasting process very challenging. A suitable forecasting system should also deal with the specificities of the demand: fashion trends, seasonality, influence of many exogenous factors, …. We propose here a review of the different constraints related to the sales forecasting in the fashion industry, the methodologies and techniques existing in the literature to cope with these constraints and finally, the new topics which could be explored in the field of the sales forecasting for fashion products.