Machine Learning, Big Data and Black Friday

One of the biggest challenges, and perhaps least "sexy"problems of retail is managing inventory. Traditionally the retail "sale" was a way to manage over-stock of inventory while clearing the sales floor for the next season - making way for winter from fall, spring from winter, etc. It was definitely conventional wisdom when I was growing up to wait for the end of season to get the best deals, which, of course, meant that by the time winter rolled around again, I had forgotten about the cool sweater I purchased the year before. With today's finicky customer and even tighter margins, retailers can't afford to blithely follow these long-seated expectations. Today's brand has to practically engage in some sort of pseudo-fortune telling to predict what moderately affluent, 16 year-old girls living in suburban Atlanta will want to wear come November if it is raining more than usual.