We placed a smaller order this season than last. Not by a little — by slightly more than half. This note explains the reasoning, including the parts that did not work.

The arithmetic

A concept store makes its margin on the pieces it sells at full price. Everything else is a slow apology. Last season we ended with fifty-one pieces we did not believe in, and we discounted them, and the discount taught our customers to wait.

So we cut the buy to the pieces we would happily keep ourselves. A hundred and forty-two of them, from forty-two houses.

What we got wrong

Two things. We under-bought knitwear by a wide margin and were out of the Halvard four-ply by the second week of October. And we assumed a smaller range would be easier to photograph, which was true, and easier to explain, which was not.