>Gap gets this right. I did consulting for them and they hired aforementioned retail consultants for this job. I will admit I initially thought it was stupid,

>Gap gets this right. I did consulting for them and they hired aforementioned retail consultants for this job. I will admit I initially thought it was stupid, having been a wise retail manager at the age of 17 at one point in my life (and did a lot of level-1 tracking of sales and A/B testing, even back then!). But when these retail consultants showed me their data and how it was formatted... it was unbelievable. Most of what I experienced in retail were these nebulous and stupid ideas that were conjured from the ether from my direct managers and general managers and the like. While I'm sure not all the information I saw trickled down to employees, it was truly enlightening and gave me zero room to argue particulars with how they were studying and implementing retail flow, checkout, and return procedures.