Bruce Berman

Last month, Bruce Berman, Bloomingdale's chief financial officer, added president of Bloomingdale's Direct to his title.

Berman Named Head of Bloomingdale's Direct Mar. 07, 2008

NEW YORK , Bruce Berman has been promoted to president of Bloomingdale's Direct, adding to his responsibilities as CFO.
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Bruce Berman will bring a sharp focus and unique operational expertise to these areas."

Berman has been executive vice-president and CFO since 2004.He joined the company in 1998 as senior vice-president, CFO.Prior to that, he was senior vice-president of West Coast distribution for Federated Logistics.He began is retail career at Macy's New York.

Now, Bloomingdale's merchants log into an easy-to-use online solution that provides them with customer demand information and analytics to better manage the pricing of fashion and seasonal merchandise."Although we are still in the early stages, there appears to be a positive impact on the business," said Bruce Berman, CFO of Bloomingdale's.

"We saw that Markdown Optimization could be an important driver of sales and gross margin," said Bruce Berman, CFO of Bloomingdale's.

"Although we are still in the early stages, there appears to be a positive impact on the business," said Bruce Berman, CFO of Bloomingdale's.

Bruce Berman, EVP and CFO, Bloomingdale's

"Bruce Berman, CFO of Bloomingdale's, said: 'We saw that Markdown Optimization could be an important driver of sales and gross margin.

"We've broken a lot of our old rules with that tool," says Bruce Berman, Bloomingdale's executive vice president and CFO, "and it's given us a big win." Berman describes markdown pricing as a small but important part of what a buyer does.He emphasizes that selecting the right product is still the most important part of a buyer's responsibility and that software of this type, while helpful, is not "a panacea for running a great business."

The tool -- and the way Bloomingdale's buyers have learned to use it -- has helped change the culture in a very encouraging way."The partnership between the merchants and the technical team was exemplary, and a major contributor to the results we have achieved.

"The mindset now," says Berman, "is to take markdowns quicker, to not feel locked into particular patterns, to not think that every markdown has to be the same."

Uncovering a hidden benefitBecause inventory is now turning better, Bloomingdale's is freeing up money that allows it to "buy more opportunistically," Berman says."Some people might call this a ‘hidden benefit' but we are able to generate cash flow faster and we are driving our stock down and that allows us to get in the marketplace more quickly and replenish best-selling product."

Through an analysis of what is -- and isn't -- selling, Bloomingdale's is able to identify key characteristics of a best seller, making it possible for them to buy other products with similar traits.

"We broke the old routines of how things were done," Berman says, "and the result is that today we have fresh inventories, inventories that turn a little quicker, inventories that are appropriately priced.
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That was a little scary for the buyer, Berman says, but it worked."We sold through the product before Christmas at a lesser markdown than we had planned to run post-Christmas," he says, adding that total markdowns "were lower than they had been the prior year."

Because the financial results weren't apparent right from the start, the three months following implementation were challenging."But once our buyers started seeing that we were selling more product at lower markdowns, the benefits of using this tool became very clear," Berman says."And it works the opposite way, as well.A buyer may think they should take a markdown on an item and the system will tell them to wait, that they don't need the markdown yet."

Berman reports a significant return on Bloomingdale's investment, much of it due to how quickly and intuitively buyers adopted the full potential of MarkDown Optimization.

Berman and Frank Doroff, Bloomingdale's senior executive vice president and GMM for women's apparel, had vision, says Antony Karabus, founder and CEO of Karabus Management.
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Prior to implementing Markdown Optimization, Bloomingdale's "couldn't figure out which goods should get marked down 25 percent and which 33 percent," Berman says."The software brings that kind of nuance to the analysis.And that's been very helpful, both in maximizing the sales of marked down items and in clearing the merchandise out much quicker."

By taking the first markdown when there is "still customer demand," Bloomingdale's enjoys "a better customer response.We sell more units at a first markdown price and we have fewer units going at the second markdown price," Berman says, "so, ultimately, we generate a better gross margin and a little bit higher sales."
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Before implementing MarkDown Optimization, Bloomingdale's would "look at the worst stuff and try to make the best decision we could, but our decisions weren't supported well enough to always be very accurate," Berman says.

"We chose Karabus Management because it is the only consulting firm in the marketplace that has delivered tangible results through merchandize optimization," said Bruce Berman, CFO of Bloomingdale's.

We can all be very proud that Bloomingdale's employees really help make a difference," said Bruce Berman, Bloomingdale's Chief Financial Officer and United Way National Campaign Chair.
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Bruce Berman, Chief Financial Officer and National Campaign Chair