Let’s talk marketing for a moment.

Here are some interesting, marketing-related headlines that are “retail relevant”

1 – Luxury fashion brand Chrome Hearts buys Surfrider Hotel in Malibu for ~$37.5M, one of California’s priciest per-room hotel deals.

2 – Under Armour launches Lab96 Studios, a new in-house content studio to tell athlete stories in cinematic, long-form ways.

3 – In August, Columbia Sportswear unveils “Engineered for Whatever,” its first major brand refresh in a decade.

And there are a few others that I can cut and paste here.

I’m no marketing guru and I’m definitely not angling for a CMO role. There are plenty of talented people to dream up new experiences and spotlight stories that would otherwise fly under the radar. What I am an expert in is merchandising. And things get interesting when marketing and merchandising are out of sync.

Consider this: When I worked at Ralph Lauren, I was the head of buying for the UK and Northern Europe. The EMEA buying team worked closely with US global merchandising to build the seasonal assortment. 80% of the assortment was the same globally, and we would add prints and silhouettes that we knew our customers would buy.

It was smooth sailing until after market, when, like clockwork, we would receive an email from the US team saying that marketing had put another look into the global campaign that we had not bought. This decision forced us back to our key accounts, asking them to take units of a style they did not want and commit more of their budget after the open to buy was already spent.

This scenario is not limited to global brands with regional teams.

It happens at many retailers and brands for three main reasons:

1 – Merchandising and marketing are siloed during concept to market.

2 – Marketing is given directives that do not align with the buy.

3 – Last minute assortment changes are not always communicated to marketing, if at all.

The misalignment between merchandising and marketing creates a ripple effect that drains resources across multiple teams, including sourcing, product development, and vendors.

Further, it’s a disconnect for the customer. The investment in high-stakes marketing campaigns and initiatives falls short if there is a mismatch between messaging and product.

And if I’m spending almost $38M on a hotel as part of a marketing push, it better not fall short!

So what would be helpful here?

Marketing and merchandising need to come together earlier in the concept to market process.

Typically, marketing is involved after the assortment has been decided, and even those decisions are not exactly set in stone.

(As an aside, many functions and external vendors need to engage much earlier in the concept to market process than they currently do. Another discussion for another time.)

The purpose of involving marketing earlier is twofold. First, marketing gets a better understanding of how merchandising decisions are made and what the impacts are when sudden changes happen. Second, marketing has access to information and data that should absolutely inform product decisions as early as possible.

Of course, you might say this is easier said than done.

Marketing and merchandising have their own respective goals to chase. And candidly, where do we find the time to bring them together to understand how one impacts the other?

My answer is simple: you never find the time, you make it.

From my perspective, the biggest barrier to progress for retailers and brands isn’t a lack of talent or budget. It’s the fact that the organization is organized into silos.

It feels like we need a “Three Stooges” style intervention: someone outside of marketing and merchandising (and of sufficient credibility) to bonk a few heads together and get everyone in the same room.