When industries rely on spreadsheets to run mission-critical workflows, it’s usually not because spreadsheets are great tools. It’s because better tools never showed up.
Retail planning, merchandising, and buying have lived in this reality for years. Buyers, planners, visual merchandisers, store managers, marketers, and frontline employees are expected to coordinate complex decisions—product mixes, pricing, margin targets, store layouts, and replenishment—using disconnected files, outdated systems, and manual processes layered on top of one another.
MerchPlannr was built to fix that.
But more importantly, its launch represents how Stratus Logic approaches problem-solving across industries:
identify the real bottleneck, understand who it affects downstream, and use AI and automation to replace friction with clarity.
The Problem Wasn’t Just Inefficiency — It Was Fragmentation
In retail, the pain was obvious—but normalized.
Teams were buried in spreadsheets:
- Brand catalogs in one file
- Assortments in another
- Pricing and margin calculations somewhere else
- Store-level execution living largely in people’s heads
Technology was severely lacking, and as a result:
- Building assortments took far too long
- Speed to order and re-order suffered (hello, out-of-stocks)
- Margin optimization was inconsistent at best
- Decisions were reactive instead of strategic
Most importantly, each team saw only part of the picture:
- Buyers made decisions without full visibility into store execution
- Visual merchandisers worked without real-time assortment context
- Store employees executed plans they had little insight into—and even less ability to influence
Everyone was working hard. No one was working together.
The Insight: The Buyer Isn’t the Only User
The breakthrough didn’t come from whiteboarding features—it came from listening.
Through discovery conversations with retail clients, one thing became clear:
- The buying process itself was antiquated
- The real damage showed up downstream
Management, marketers, visual merchandisers, and in-store employees all had legitimate needs that weren’t being met because tools were designed around isolated functions—not collaborative workflows.
Retail planning wasn’t just slow.
It was disjointed.
That insight reshaped the problem definition entirely. MerchPlannr wouldn’t just help buyers build assortments faster—it would connect planning, execution, learning, and optimization in one shared system.
The Solution: One Platform, Shared Intelligence
MerchPlannr eliminates layers of spreadsheets by centralizing the core components of retail planning:
- Brand catalogs and assortments
- Pricing and margin visibility
- Ordering and replenishment context
- Store-level execution alignment
Everyone—from shop owners and general managers to visual merchandisers and frontline employees—gets access to the information they need, when they need it.
- Visual merchandisers can build planograms directly in the platform and use AI to jump-start layouts
- Buyers make faster, smarter decisions with real data at their fingertips
- Leadership gains visibility across planning and execution without chasing updates
The result isn’t just efficiency.
It’s alignment.
And alignment is where better decisions come from.
Why This Matters Beyond Retail
Retail is where this problem surfaced most clearly—but it’s far from the only industry facing it.
We see the same pattern across sectors:
- Manufacturing & Supply Chain
- Production planning, inventory forecasting, and supplier coordination handled through disconnected systems and manual workarounds
- Healthcare Operations
- Scheduling, staffing, and resource planning spread across legacy tools that don’t communicate
- Professional Services
- Project planning, capacity management, and financial forecasting stitched together with spreadsheets and best guesses
- Multi-Location Businesses
- Corporate strategy disconnected from on-the-ground execution, with little feedback loop between the two
Different industries.
Same root problem:
> Critical decisions made slowly, in silos, with incomplete data.
The Stratus Logic Approach: Build, Learn, Iterate
MerchPlannr is a product—but it’s also a case study in how Stratus Logic works.
The process didn’t start with “let’s build a platform.”
It started with a single, well-defined problem:
- The time it took to build product assortments
From there, Stratus Logic took an iterative approach:
- Client feedback guided prioritization
- AI enabled rapid prototyping and deployment of high-impact features
AI wasn’t bolted on for buzzword points. It was used deliberately to:
- Accelerate design
- Reduce manual effort
- Surface smarter starting points for users
That same mindset applies whether we’re building our own products or partnering with clients to solve theirs.
What MerchPlannr’s Launch Signals
MerchPlannr is still evolving. Its roadmap includes deeper integrations and expanded capabilities to support businesses operating across physical and digital storefronts.
But its launch already proves something important:
> When you combine deep industry understanding, user-centered discovery, and AI-driven development, you don’t just make processes faster—you make organizations work better together.
That’s the opportunity for businesses across industries.
Not to “add AI,” but to rethink how teams:
- Plan
- Execute
- Learn
…using technology that actually reflects how work gets done.
And that’s exactly where Stratus Logic does its best work.
Learn more at MerchPlannr.com or Contact us