About Trademaster

Trademaster 2 is a financial planning package for merchandisers. It provides sales, purchases and stock budgets at merchandise level for branches, departments and sections. It includes budgets for direct costs and contribution, and it allows a retailer to plan shop costs and company overheads, operating profit and cash flow. Planning is on a seasonal basis, two seasons in a year.

Trademaster 2 has an interface that any "merchandise management" package can use, allowing period-end results for sales, purchases, markdowns etc. to be downloaded, but these values can also be entered manually. Variance reports are produced, actual versus budget and the difference between the two (the Variance), from which the user can see, over the season and year, the trends in growth, realised margin, stockturn, contribution and many other factors month-by-month.

"What if?" scenarios can be created allowing the user to project trends and see the effect on the business. In short, it provides an environment where the retailer can plan forward and control forward purchases, stocks and profitability continuously in the light of actual results to date, in real time by making changes to ensure profitability is maintained.

At all stages, a comprehensive range of KPIs is presented. reporting growth, margins, contribution, and stock performance on a comparative basis. Performance by unit area is also reported, allowing the user to optimise merchandise mix across the store.

Trademaster 2 was originally released in 1984 and although it is a DOS-based product and active marketing ceased ten years ago, there are still over 30 users all over Britain and the Channel Islands. The users range in size from 10,000 to 200,000 square feet of retail space, mostly independent department stores and fashion chains.

After those few words you will already realise that Trademaster 2 faithfully replicates the buying cycle of fashion-type retail, from a seasonal buying pattern through delivery, stocking and in-season sales of product, giving the user the ability to plan ahead in detail and control merchandising in real time.

Here are some questions we get asked...

Why "Trademaster 2"?

"Trademaster" was the name of the original 1984 product, designed in the days before the first IBM PC appeared!. After a few years the software was completely redesigned in the light of user experience and also to take advantage of what passed for "advanced technology" at that time. It was then renamed Trademaster 2

Can I buy it?

We are sorry to say the answer is no. We would not feel comfortable selling such an old product even though it does exactly what it says on the tin. We do however reissue Trademaster to lapsed users who want to come back on board.

Will there be a Windows version?

We have had two attempts at producing a Windows product with all the same features, and in fact a working Windows version was actually issued at one point. But we would need a larger software house than ours to commit resources to marketing and support to the project and that commitment has never been forthcoming.

Is there a modern product like Trademaster?

We are again sorry to say the answer is no. One firm we know of reproduced some Trademaster features but without the really essential features that make it such a powerful tool. Trademaster is capable of being a simple budgeting and reporting tool or a detailed and fully featured financial model of a retail business that permits complete control of every aspect of profitability. There is nothing else that we know of that does that.