What Merch Teams Wish Marketing Understood
And what marketing wish merch understood...
If you’ve ever worked in a retail brand, you’ll know the tension: merchandising lives under a microscope, while marketing often seems to escape with little more than a raised eyebrow. Merch has to justify every decimal point of margin, every missed size curve, every unit that didn’t sell. Marketing can drop a million pounds on a glossy campaign and, unless sales tank, rarely has to show a spreadsheet proving what it actually delivered.
The imbalance isn’t just frustrating, it’s bad for business.
Heroes vs. Dogs (and Heroes vs. Heroes)
Marketing loves a hero product. The piece everyone knows, the one that looks good on a billboard, the one they can build a campaign narrative around. Merch doesn’t hate the heroes, but they’re rarely the problem. The real challenge is the stock sitting in the warehouse, the colourway that missed the trend, the seasonal piece with a short window to sell, the product backed in volume that isn’t moving.
That’s where marketing’s weight makes the biggest difference. A social push, gifting, or a clever VM shift can stop those styles from drifting straight into markdown. Merch will flag what needs the help - the “what” - but the “how” should come from marketing.
There’s also a deeper mismatch: a merch “hero” and a marketing “hero” aren’t always the same thing. For merch, the hero is the big buy, the product backed in units, pushed into all stores, expected to drive sales. For marketing, the hero is often the image-driving piece that defines the campaign. Both matter, but confusing the two is where things fall down. Campaigns that centre on product with shallow stock end up frustrating teams and customers alike. Sometimes that’s fine, selling out of a limited piece can create demand, but marketing also needs to know where the real volume sits.
Visibility Matters
Merch works with reality. If a drop is missing half its key styles, they usually know about it weeks in advance. The problem is: that visibility doesn’t always make it through. Delivery schedules often live in sprawling spreadsheets that are unclear, static, and out of date before anyone opens them. Ownership varies between logistics, supply chain, and merch, but in practice it’s merch and buying who end up consolidating the issues.
Marketing doesn’t need every column and code; they need a clear, visual view of what’s in and what’s out. If a campaign launches around a summer drop, which pieces are definitely landing, which are late, and which might not show at all? Without that, you end up with ads pushing product that’s stuck in a warehouse.
The fix doesn’t have to be complex. Simplifying delivery reporting into something visual and digestible makes collaboration possible. Everyone, marketing, merch, VM, needs the latest view of reality.
Space for Reactivity
Too often, marketing calendars are locked to pre-season “heroes.” But trade doesn’t play by the calendar. Some buys don’t land, others overperform, and many sit in the grey area in between; good quantities, limited window to sell, stock waiting in the warehouse.
That’s where reactive space matters. Marketing needs to leave room in the season to respond to merch insights: the pieces underperforming, the swimwear that isn’t shifting, the sandals that should have flown but didn’t. The earlier those insights reach marketing, the more options they have, before it all slides into markdown.
Scrutiny Without Balance
When merch misses a size curve or overbuys a style, the questions come thick and fast: Why did you buy this much? Why didn’t you have that size? Why is margin down by 0.1%? Meanwhile, marketing can commission a high-profile shoot, burn through a budget, and move on without anyone really tracing ROI. Merch doesn’t necessarily want marketing hauled over the same coals, they just want accountability to be balanced.
Collaboration, Not Silos
Selling product is messy. Deliveries slip, fabrics change, bets don’t land. Merch, buying, marketing, VM, they all feel the consequences. But too often, marketing decides its narrative in isolation, ignoring the rest.
Collaboration isn’t merch running campaigns, it’s merch providing the reality of stock, and marketing using its influence where it counts. It’s VM and marketing working from the same playbook, so the store flip doesn’t go live missing half the product. It’s creating enough flex to react in-season, not pretending everything can be pre-scripted months in advance.
Final Thought
Merch doesn’t want marketing to do their job. They want marketing to use its weight in the right places, to support the products that need it, to align with reality rather than the campaign deck. When the two functions work in sync, you don’t just sell the easy wins, you protect margins, move stock, and build resilience. That’s what merch wishes marketing understood.