1. Copyright 2013 JDA Software Group, Inc. - CONFIDENTIAL
Breaking the Wedge
1
Can you imagine a retail world without Walmart or Target? Without
Amazon or eBay? Without McDonald’s or Starbucks? If you are under
50, you probably can’t. That was the world of the 1950s, before the
tremendous explosion of mass merchandising occurred, and with
it, the emergence of the proverbial wedge.
Read: Breaking the Wedge
What’s the wedge? It’s the shape of assortment
plans when traditional methodologies are used to
create assortments based on store size and volume.
For six decades this assortment wedge concept
worked marvelously, providing mass merchandisers
with a guideline on how to push the most products to
the stores with the size and volume to handle it best.
And then along came Steve Jobs, Jeffrey
Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg and Meg Whitman who all
understood what the customer wanted and found
new ways to leverage this information to get new
products to them in new and interesting ways. And
in doing so, they forever changed the face of
retailing.
Meet the Author:
Scott Welty is JDA Software’s
global vice president of retail
strategy. With widespread
experience within the retail
industry, he is responsible for
strengthening executive-level
relationships with JDA’s retail
customers and key prospects.