Fab India is a chain of retail stores in India producing ethnic products carried out by the craftsmen of rural India.

The Fab India products are mainly source to sustain and provide employment opportunities to the rural people in India. The company employs more than 15000 craftsmen and artisans all over India.

Fab India was initially commenced as a village based industry in 1960 by John Bissell, who was previously working for the New York Macy as a consumer left his job position and started to work for Ford Foundation as a counsellor where he had given 2 years to instruct the Indian villagers to make textile possessions for export. His firm belief was to enhance the growth of textile industry and was very determined to provide a platform for the Indian handloom textile industries. He provided equitable job opportunities to the traditional artisans and established Fab India in 1960, to amalgamate the best approaches of West & East Collaboration.

Twin Mandate :

A viable, profitable retail platform for products created using hand-based processes The creation of skilled, craft-based sustainable jobs in the rural sector

Use of natural products to wear, to use, to imbibe and to apply

Optimization of the craft element in all products Blend of indigenous craft techniques with contemporary designs to bring aesthetic and affordable products to consumers Revival of craft techniques and sustained rural employment

Unit No. F & b-4, First Floor, Inorbit Mall, Opposite I Labs Building, Vanenburg IT Park, Durgam Chervu Lake, Hi-Tech City, Madhapur

Store Mix Type of Store: Mall Store Ownership: Rental Store Manager Ms. Aruna Staff 4 Stores Location & Ambience: Inorbit Mall Store Location: Up market, Chic, High Footfalls areas Store Dcor: Clearly highlights the natural organic theme Product Assortment: Highlighting the newly launched product line at the entrance Traditional Mainstay(Clothing)

Sales forecasting is analyzing all parts of a business from total inventory to the strengths and weaknesses of salespeople.

Sales forecasting is estimating what a company's future sales are likely to be based on sales records as well as market research.
The information used in them must be well organized and may include information on the competition and statistics that affect the businesses' customer base. Companies try to forecast sales in hopes of identifying patterns so that revenue and cash flow can be maximized.

Forecasting extrapolating the past into future using statistical and mathematical methods Objectives: Ignore random fluctuations in demand But be responsive to real change

Long Term
5+ years into the future R&D, plant location, product planning Principally judgment-based

Medium Term
1 season to 2 years Aggregate planning, capacity planning, sales forecasts Mixture of quantitative methods and judgment

Short Term
1 day to 1 year, less than 1 season Demand forecasting, staffing levels, purchasing, inventory levels Quantitative methods

Scheduling existing resources

demand?

How many employees do we need and when? How much product should we make in anticipation of When are we going to run out of capacity? How many more people will we need? How large will our back-orders be?

Acquiring additional resources

Determining what resources are needed

What kind of machines will we require? Which services are growing in demand? declining? What kind of people should we be hiring

Example from Industry:

70,000 items;

American Hospital Supply Corp.

25 stocking locations; Store 3 years of data (63

million data points);

Update forecasts monthly; 21 million forecast updates

per year.

Types of Forecasts
Qualitative --- based on experience, judgement, knowledge; Quantitative --- based on data, statistics;

Methods of Forecasting
Naive Methods --- eye-balling the numbers; Formal Methods --- systematically reduce forecasting errors; time series models (e.g. exponential smoothing); causal models (e.g. regression). Focus here on Time Series Models

Assumptions of Time Series Models

There is information about the past; This information can be quantified in the form of data; The pattern of the past will continue into the future.

Staple Merchandise

Fashion Merchandise

Predictable Demand History of Past Sales Relatively Accurate Forecasts

Unpredictable Demand Limited Sales History Difficult to Forecast Sales

The data source, there are three kinds of data, namely, the time series data, cross-section data, and panel data.
The time series data, which is collected over discrete intervals of time, is widely used in forecasting and the methods applied to timeseries data are also well developed Cross-section data is collected over sample units in a particular time period and panel data follows individual micro units over time.

The sales target is given for each month; the targets are higher than last years sales for the same month.

The store makes sales of 7 lakh monthly approx; the store carries inventory worth 20 lakhs, targets are given for each month based on previous 2 to 3 year pattern (month wise).
If there is irregularity they try to find why that has happened, where there any institutional sales or other factors that affected the monthly sale of that month. Some months are low sale period and some are high sale owing to different reasons. The monthly sales target is given to each category and every week it checked upon to see whether they would be achieving it or not.

Festivities and special days increases the sales, the targets are further split into quarterly and the sales are daily analyzed by the regional market research team. Hyderabad falls under Market region 9 which is head by Ms. Archana Nandal. They have to send Daily sales report which determines the sale of that day, how much foot fall was there in store, the average bill value, ticket size, returns, net sales etc Activity Summary Report tells about the opening stock and closing stock for the day. These are constantly monitored and before making the forecast each area market head has to analyze and propose a figure based on their geographical area. Based on these report the sales figure are tracked and analyzed by marketing people and also the store people. This is done by the software fabsoft. After closing is done these reports are generated and sent daily before shutting down the store.

In fashion retail system, the sales of the apparel product are strongly influenced by the calendar factor, for example, holiday. It can be observed easily that the sales in Dussera & Diwali sales will go up very quickly and highly. On one hand, the demands on these specific dates are much more volatile and difficult to predict. On the other hand, the revenue that can be generated during these periods of time can be huge. As a consequence, how to precisely forecast the demand during special dates/events becomes crucial to fashion retailors.

One of the main reasons why staff training is important is the staff will become competent and they will be able to offer good services to customers. The training will also enable the staff to meet the expectations of the firm. It is also important because it can play a part in attracting customers and winning contracts

Training and career development are very vital in an company or organization that aims at progressing. It targets specific goals, for instance understanding a process and operating a certain machine or system.

Help in addressing employee weaknesses: Most workers have certain weaknesses in their workplace, which hinder them from giving the best services. Training assists in eliminating these weaknesses, by strengthening workers skills. Improvement in workers performance A properly trained employee becomes more informed about procedures for various tasks. The worker confidence is also boosted by training and development. It helps the worker carry out the duties in better way and even find new ideas to incorporate in the daily execution of duty.

Consistency in duty performance A well organized training and development program gives the workers constant knowledge and experience. Ensuring worker satisfaction Training and development makes the employee also feel satisfied with the role they play in the company or organization. This is driven by the great ability they gain to execute their duties. Increased productivity Through training and development the employee acquires all the knowledge and skills needed in their day to day tasks. Workers can perform at a faster rate and with efficiency thus increasing overall productivity of the company.

INDUCTION

Introducing a new employee to the organization and its procedures, rules and regulations.

Every new employee needs to be made familiar with his job, his superiors and subordinates and with the rules and regulations of the Organization. It is short and informative Given immediately after recruitment

USE OF HANDBOOK Employee Handbook: A document that describes an organizations conditions for employment (such as attendance, behavior on the job, performance of duties), policies regarding employees (time off, hours of work, benefits),

administrative procedures (filling out timesheets and travel expense reports), and related matters.

ON JOB TRAINING

To increase the knowledge and skills of an employee for improving performance on the job. It includes learning about Fabindia Categories, Product Knowledge, techniques of hand craft implemented. The difference between organic and natural products, to accustom them with the kind of fabrics used and their terminologies.

To learn about the placement of each sub categories within a category eg: They have catgories like Women's Indian Women's western Garment Accessories Personal care Table linen Etc Now in each they have sub categories like for eg: in women's Indian they have Kurta long ,Kurta short, Kurta super short, so a person on the shop floor must know what is kept where, how to greet customers and explain them about the work in a given garment.

For a person on probation to become a fabindia employ they have to pass an exam relating to fabindia history, their product knowledge, their protocols, etc.

In fabindia every month they have new collection based on new themes, so every time the store manager gives a little training on the new collection, there are discussions how the sale can be increased, what are the customers looking for, how to cross sell,upsell.
Store manager motivates the members to have a competitive mind when selling and welcome the customer with smile.

PROMOTIONAL TRAINING

It involves training of existing employees to enable them to perform higher level jobs. Employees with potential are selected and are given training before their promotion. They have core value assessment for appraisal, one has write about themselves then the manager also writes about the employee.

Also called Retraining

Purpose is to acquaint the existing employees with the latest methods of performing their jobs and improve their efficiency further i.e. to avoid personnel obsolescence It is essential because- To relearn

To keep pace with the technological changes in the field When newly created jobs are given to existing employees Training is conducted once in every two months one or two people are selected from the store and sent for training, then these people are made mentors to their store people to explain and tell about the learning.

For managers they conduct M300 training once a year at head office existing managers and employee capable of becoming managers are selected and sent. Store managers also conduct training every month, one on one interactions are there, sometimes role play are conducted. Category management trainings are held and they take test on the basis of which they assign product champs. Most knowledgeable about a particular category.

From a turnover of 36 crore rupees in 2000-01, Fabindia has grown to having a turnover of Rs 450 crores in 2012. For Fabindia William Bissell has set a very ambitious target of reaching 250 stores and a turnover of Rs.1000 crore.

Sales forecasting is crucial for many retail operations. It is especially critical for the fashion retailing service industry in which product demand is very volatile and products life cycle is short. In order to achieve economics sustainability under a highly competitive environment, a company should adopt a consumerdemand driven pull operational strategy which means forecasting becomes a critically important task.

Employees with access to training and development programs have the advantage over employees in other companies who are left to seek out training opportunities on their own. The investment in training that a company makes shows the employees they are valued.

The training creates a supportive workplace. Employees may gain access to training they wouldn't have otherwise known about or sought out themselves. Employees who feel appreciated and challenged through training opportunities may feel more satisfaction toward their jobs.

About the company. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fabindia.com/company/.

About the School. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fabindiaschools.org/bali/index.html Employee Training And Development. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://ucsfhr.ucsf.edu/index.php/pubs/hrguidearticle /chapter-11-employee-development-training/

Fabindia Products. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fabindia.com/products/ Philosophy. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.fabindia.com/philosophy/.

Sales forecasting. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://www.hindawi.com/journals/mpe/2013/7386 75 / William Bissell: Turning Fabindia's Artisans to Company Owners. (n.d.). Retrieved from http://forbesindia.com/printcontent/33861