Merchandise management is probably not even on the radar for most of you right now. After all, the key indicators typically used to measure merchandise performance are looking good at the moment—stockrooms are full, collection charges are up, and inputs are down. Unfortunately, many of these metrics are artificially affected. Events like the economic downturn have driven high levels of quit items, quit wearers, quit accounts and inventory reductions that have forced product back into plants. This has also resulted in a short-term reduction of required input dollars and artificially increased recovery collections. 
 
I recently heard a ...