Inventory Management

After seasonal planning, Merchants place purchase orders with vendors.  The merchandise is made, and shipped via container ship to one of the distribution centers on either the East or West Coast.  The purchase order is then received and allocated to stores.  (Planning and Allocation is a department in NY that uses sales models to determine how much of a particular item a store should receive.) Using the warehouse management systems, the items are put in boxes and loaded on trucks to be consolidated at pool points.  Pool points are centrally located terminals around the country that take multiple truckloads of cartons, separate them to stores, and create a shipment ID # to then be delivered to the store. The shipment ID# is fed to the stores, so they are able to see in advance how many cartons they will be receiving the following day. The delivery driver then arrives at the store with the cartons and the bill of lading.  Stores sign off that the cartons agree with the total. Store then unpacks the boxes, and releases the product to the selling floor.

A few times a year, stores will take a physical inventory.  The purpose of taking an inventory is to get an accurate picture of what product is physically in the store. This assists the allocation department with replenishment, and identifies stores with shrink issues. 

Aeropostale uses a 3rd party vendor that travels to each store and scan each barcode on the ticket. The files are then uploaded and the new on hands are posted to the system.