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Predictive Modeling of US Winter Apparel Sales Using Time Series Forecasting Method
Engy Shafik
Ph.D. Program in Textile Technology Management
College of Textiles
North Carolina State University
Raleigh, North Carolina
27695-8301
USA
ABSTRACT
Fashion and apparel sales have always been an interesting aspect of study due to the immense
number of controllable and uncontrollable variables that contributes to the total sales. In order to
develop a sound predictive model for forecasting apparel sales a lot of factors can be incorporated
to enhance the results and minimize the forecast error. This paper will present a Time Series
Forecasting model of US Apparel and accessories sales for the winter season. This model is
generated to shed the light on the unexpected loss incurred by retailers for the winter season of
2015 by incorporating weather variation as an influencer on the sales. This paper is also going to
discuss some important managerial approaches which empower firms to deal better with
unforeseen variabilities.
35000
US Monthly Apparel Sales for 2005 - 2014
30000
US Apparel Sales in Million $
25000
20000
15000
10000
5000
May-14
May-05
May-06
May-07
May-08
May-09
May-10
May-11
May-12
May-13
Jan-05
Jan-06
Jan-07
Jan-08
Jan-09
Jan-10
Jan-11
Jan-12
Jan-13
Jan-14
Sep-14
Sep-05
Sep-06
Sep-07
Sep-08
Sep-09
Sep-10
Sep-11
Sep-12
Sep-13
Monthly Sales 2005-2014
Figure 1: US Monthly Apparel and Apparel accessories sales for years 2005-2014. Source:
Sales Data used for plotting the diagram was retrieved from
http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/cenret/nrt448nsa
Dec-06
Dec-07
Dec-08
Dec-09
Dec-10
Dec-12
Dec-13
Dec-14
Jan-05
Jan-06
Jan-07
Jan-08
Jan-09
Jan-10
Jan-11
Jan-12
Jan-13
Jan-14
Feb-09
Feb-05
Feb-06
Feb-07
Feb-08
Feb-10
Feb-11
Feb-12
Feb-13
Feb-14
Figure 2. US Apparel and Apparel Accessories Sales of the Winter Season (Dec through
Feb) for years 2005-2014. Source: Sales Data used for Plotting the Diagram was retrieved
from http://www.economagic.com/em-cgi/data.exe/cenret/nrt448nsa
40
Time Series Forecasting
35
30
US Apparel Winter
Sales in Million $
25
20
15
10
Actual Sales
5 Forecasted Sales
Figure 3. Predictive model of US Apparel (and Apparel accessories) Sales of the Winter
Season (Dec through Feb) up to Year 2018 using Time Series Forecast Technique.