RE:PLAN Europe 2026: a guide for merchandise planning leaders
RE:PLAN Europe (formerly PI Apparel Merchandise Planning) is a two-day conference for merchandise planning leaders in fashion, held October 13–14, 2026 at The Hurlingham Club in London. Now in its fourth year, it is the planning event in PI’s portfolio — PI bills it as the only event dedicated to merchandise planning in fashion — and 2026 is the first edition under the new name.
This guide covers what the event is, who attends, what the 2026 themes mean in practice for a planning organization, and the questions worth carrying into the room.
What RE:PLAN is
RE:PLAN began under the PI Apparel banner as PI Apparel Merchandise Planning and has run for four years as the planning-focused counterpart to PI’s PLM and product-development events. In 2026 PI rebranded its event families: the product-development side became The Fashion Tech Show, and the planning event became RE:PLAN. The name changed; the remit did not — merchandise planning is the entire agenda, not a track.
That remit is what makes it unusual. The large retail shows cover planning as one theme among dozens; the planning-specific gathering is a rarer format, and PI bills RE:PLAN as the only event dedicated to merchandise planning in fashion. Dates, venue, and the current agenda are published on PI’s event page.
The 2026 themes, decoded for a planning org
PI lists four themes for 2026. Each one maps to a question a planning leader already owns.
| 2026 theme | What the agenda covers | The question underneath |
|---|---|---|
| Planning tech integration | Connecting planning tools with PLM, ERP, and analytics | Which system owns the plan, and how does a change propagate? |
| Inventory management | Allocation, rebalancing, and in-season inventory decisions | How fast does the buy respond once the season disagrees with it? |
| Resilient planning | Planning under demand and supply volatility | What does the plan assume about your ability to correct? |
| Cross-functional collaboration | Merchandising, planning, buying, and finance on one number | Do the functions share a plan, or reconcile three of them? |
- What the agenda covers
- Connecting planning tools with PLM, ERP, and analytics
- The question underneath
- Which system owns the plan, and how does a change propagate?
- What the agenda covers
- Allocation, rebalancing, and in-season inventory decisions
- The question underneath
- How fast does the buy respond once the season disagrees with it?
- What the agenda covers
- Planning under demand and supply volatility
- The question underneath
- What does the plan assume about your ability to correct?
- What the agenda covers
- Merchandising, planning, buying, and finance on one number
- The question underneath
- Do the functions share a plan, or reconcile three of them?
Planning tech integration is the fragmentation question. Most planning organizations run the season across a planning tool, an ERP, a PLM, and a layer of spreadsheets covering the seams — so the practical sessions here are less about any single tool and more about which system holds the authoritative plan and what a replan costs to propagate. Inventory management is the in-season half of the same problem: allocation, rebalancing between channels, markdown timing, and weeks-of-supply discipline once actuals start diverging from the buy.
Resilient planning concerns what the plan assumes about correction — early reads, reorders, chase capacity — and how to plan in ranges when single-number forecasts keep losing to the season (a question we’ve argued at length in Planning for the Season You’ll Actually Have). Cross-functional collaboration is the decision-rights question: whether merchandising, planning, buying, and finance commit to one number at a stated grain, or spend the season reconciling parallel versions of it.
Who attends, and who should
The room is planning and merchandising leadership at fashion brands and retailers — planning directors, heads of merchandise planning and allocation, VPs of merchandising, and the executives sponsoring a planning-technology decision. It is a working event, not an expo: small and senior enough that the value sits in the sessions and the conversations between them rather than a booth circuit. That format favors people who arrive with their own operating questions — how the plan is structured, where it fragments, who owns which decision — over people collecting vendor overviews. If merchandise planning is a slice of your job rather than the core of it, the bigger general-retail shows cover more ground per day; if the plan is your job, this is the room where everyone else has the same one.
How to prepare
Two days is short, and the scarce asset is calibration — a room of peers who own the same number you do. The way to spend it well is to arrive with your questions written down. A starting set:
- How do peers split pre-season from in-season — where does the plan hand off to trading, and who owns it after the handoff?
- What are they doing about planning-tool fragmentation — which system holds the authoritative plan, and what still lives in spreadsheets?
- At what grain do they plan — and which decisions (depth, size curve, phasing) sit at which level of the hierarchy?
- Who owns the markdown decision, the chase decision, and the exit decision — and does anyone own the full-price number?
- What did their last planning-tech decision actually require from the team, and what would they weigh differently now?
To sharpen your own answers before comparing them with anyone else’s, the decision-rights map and planning-grain frameworks are the two we’d bring, and the operating model assessment gives you a structured read on where your own workflow fragments.
The sibling events
RE:PLAN Europe sits in a rebranded portfolio. RE:PLAN USA brings the same planning format to New York in spring 2027. The Fashion Tech Show — the renamed PI Apparel PLM and product-development events — runs editions in New York, Los Angeles, and Europe, and covers the product-creation side of the stack rather than the plan. Stride is PI’s footwear-specific event. For a planning leader the distinction that matters is simple: The Fashion Tech Show is where your PLM and product-development counterparts go; RE:PLAN is the one aimed at the merchandise plan itself.
- RE:PLAN Europe 2026 runs October 13–14 at The Hurlingham Club, London — the fourth edition of the event formerly named PI Apparel Merchandise Planning.
- PI bills it as the only event dedicated to merchandise planning in fashion; planning is the whole agenda, not a track.
- The 2026 themes — planning tech integration, inventory management, resilient planning, cross-functional collaboration — map to the fragmentation, in-season response, correction-capacity, and decision-rights questions a planning org already owns.
- It is small, senior, and working-format: best used for calibration against peers, with your own operating questions written down in advance.
- RE:PLAN USA follows in New York in spring 2027; The Fashion Tech Show covers the PLM and product-development side of the portfolio.
Frequently asked questions
- When and where is RE:PLAN Europe 2026?
- RE:PLAN Europe 2026 runs October 13–14, 2026 at The Hurlingham Club in London. It is the fourth edition of the event, which ran in previous years as PI Apparel Merchandise Planning.
- What happened to PI Apparel Merchandise Planning?
- It became RE:PLAN. PI rebranded its event families in 2026: the merchandise planning event is now RE:PLAN, and the PLM and product-development events became The Fashion Tech Show. The planning event itself continues under the new name — 2026 is its fourth year.
- Who should attend RE:PLAN Europe?
- Planning and merchandising leadership at fashion brands and retailers — VPs of merchandising, planning directors, heads of planning and allocation, and the executives sponsoring a planning-technology decision. It is a small, senior, planning-specific event, so it rewards the people who actually own the plan.
- How does RE:PLAN differ from NRF Big Show or Shoptalk for a planner?
- Scale and focus. NRF states 41,000+ retail professionals attend the Big Show, and Shoptalk states around 10,000 attend its spring edition; both cover all of retail, so planning is one thread among many. RE:PLAN inverts that: a small event where merchandise planning is the entire agenda — PI bills it as the only event dedicated to merchandise planning in fashion.
- Is there a US edition of RE:PLAN?
- Yes. RE:PLAN USA is scheduled for spring 2027 in New York City, alongside the European edition each autumn.
Disconnected workflows do not just slow teams down — they create planning risk, margin leakage, and late decisions.