Independent Retail March and April 2025 Performance Results — Management One Inventory Planning

One of the most frequent questions we hear at Management One is, “How am I doing compared to my peers?” To help answer, we provide below some highlights of March and April 2025. We chose to combine the two months as Easter has meaningful impact on many of our clients, and the holiday fell in March in 2024 but in April in 2025.

Looking across all clients in our top 10 verticals, sales for the two-month period were flat compared to last year, and inventories were up 4%. 

As usual, performance varied meaningfully by retail vertical and by class of merchandise.  See below for results by vertical for our key groups, with sales growth led by the toy and hobby category.  One callout is that luxury fashion markdowns grew meaningfully, suggesting they were needed to support continued sales growth.  Is the luxury consumer feeling pinched after a long stretch of strong spending?

Management One Client Performance by Vertical from March 1 to April 30, 2025