Walk into market with a number, not a feeling

Take $5,769 to market as your ceiling, split it across the vendors you plan to see before you go, and leave 10–15% unallocated for the style you didn’t know existed until you saw it. The budget is the permission to say no.

How the math works

Open-to-buy asks one question: how much inventory do you need to bring in so you can sell what you plan to sell and still end the season with the stock you want? Planned sales and planned markdowns drain inventory; what’s on hand and on order already fills it. Whatever gap remains — at retail — is yours to buy, and dividing by your markup converts it to wholesale dollars for market.

One bridal adjustment: count only sales that come out of your stock. A special order is made by the designer for one bride, arrives and leaves, so it never changes what’s on your rack. Leave special orders out of planned sales and their purchase orders out of on order. For the sample wall, that makes open-to-buy a replacement plan: the samples you’ll retire, plus any growth you want, minus what’s already coming.

Rerun it before every buying trip. The number changes as the season sells through — that’s the point.