Annals of Operations Research https://doi.org/10.1007/s10479-019-03148-8 S.I.:REALCASEOR Demand forecasting in retail operations for fashionable products: methods, practices, and real case study Shuyun Ren 1 · Hau-Ling Chan 2 · Tana Siqin 3 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2019 Abstract Demand forecasting for the fashionable products is still a difficult task for both academia and industry regardless of how many effective approaches have been investigated and studied in the literature. The arriving of big data era leads to a round of revolution on the demand forecasting for the fashionable products, and at the same time, it makes a great challenge to traditional forecasting methods and inventory planning. In this study, we firstly conduct a comprehensive literature review on demand forecasting methods for the fashionable products and find out the challenges of the traditional forecasting methods. Then, we examine how fashion retailer tackles the future demand forecasting and inventory planning problem in practice via a real-world case study. Finally, an in-depth analysis and future research directions are discussed. Keywords Demand forecasting · Fashion retail · Case study · Big data 1 Introduction Over the past years, there has been a significant revolution in the fashion industry. The rapid development of big data and AI technologies have redefined the fashion retail operations as it provides explosive information growth and affects both the behaviors of the customers and operations of the companies significantly, including those in the fashion industry. In the past, it was observed that the fashion retailers were the ones who had full information, however, this phenomenon has been changed. Nowadays, due to the technological development, customers B Hau-Ling Chan itcling@yahoo.com.hk Shuyun Ren shuyun_shara@live.cn Tana Siqin tana525@126.com 1 Guangdong University of Technology, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, China 2 Division of Business, Hong Kong Community College, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong 3 SHU-UTS SILC Business School, Shanghai University, Jiading District, Shanghai City, China 123