SMP Advisors is Chris Conroy.
A merchandise planning practice that builds the systems as well as the plans — founded in 2013 and working with DTC and multi-channel brands out of New York.
What SMP stands for
Strategic Merchandise Planning. It's the discipline the business was built around: deciding what to buy, how much of it, in what sizes, arriving when — and being able to defend every one of those numbers.
How I got here
A leader with 25 years of merchandise planning experience, across start-up to enterprise-level multi-channel and vertical organizations. I am a champion of change, looking for new ways to analyze and plan businesses — focusing on being proactive, which limits the amount of time spent being reactive. My goal is to stop the pendulum swings in buying behaviors by giving transparency to forward trends and integrating data analytics into the process.
I’ve spent the past few years building new merchandise planning and analytics capabilities that combine decades of merchandising experience with today’s data and AI tools — something I wish I’d had when working at companies like J. Crew, Cole Haan, Coach and Mack Weldon.
Throughout my career I’ve worked with startups, growth brands and established retailers across men’s, women’s and kids’ businesses. I’ve built planning organizations, hired and developed teams, created planning processes, and designed the analytics and systems that help leadership make faster, smarter merchandising decisions.
The work is focused on practical business outcomes, not technology for technology’s sake: improving SKU productivity, increasing inventory turns, protecting gross margin, reducing markdowns, strengthening replenishment and core programs, improving forecasting, and giving leadership a real-time view of what’s happening across the business so decisions can be made earlier and with greater confidence.
What makes my approach different is that I bridge both sides of the business. I understand merchandising and planning at an operating level, but I also build the underlying data, analytics and AI-driven tools that make those organizations more effective. The result is practical solutions that teams actually use — not just another dashboard.
Why I build the systems too
Most planning consultants stop at the recommendation. That was never enough in my own work: the recommendation was only as good as the numbers behind it, and the numbers were usually assembled by hand from an ERP that had never been asked to answer the question.
So the practice covers both ends. I'll tell you what your history says about next season, and I'll build the thing that keeps telling you — on your data, in your tools, owned by you.
What I believe about planning.
Potential before actual. What sold is capped by what was in stock. Any process that treats sales history as demand history will rebuy the same stockouts indefinitely.
The merchant is not the enemy of the model. Seeded numbers are a starting position, not a verdict. Every one of them should be typeable-over, and the typed number should win without a fight.
One number, many views. If the planner's workbook and the executive's dashboard disagree, both get ignored and the business goes back to instinct. They should read from the same source.
Handover is part of the build. An engagement that leaves you dependent on the consultant has failed, however good the model is.
Let's talk about your season.
Thirty minutes, no pitch, and an honest answer about whether I'm the right fit.