The Top-Dog Index: a new measurement for the demand consistency of the size distribution in pre-pack orders for a fashion discounter with many small branches

We propose the new Top‐Dog‐Index, a measure for the branch‐dependent historic deviation of the supply data of apparel sizes from the sales data of a fashion discounter. Our approach individually measures for each branch the scarcest and the amplest sizes, aggregated over all products. This measurement can iteratively be used to adapt the size distributions in the pre‐pack orders for the future. A real‐world blind study shows the potential of this distribution free heuristic optimization approach: The gross yield measured in percent of gross value was almost one percentage point higher in the test‐group branches than in the control‐group branches.