Chris Gerardy's career in supply chain started with a conversation he wasn't supposed to be having. He was 24 years old, no degree, managing a Famous Footwear store in Atlanta during the 1996 Olympics — when the corporate allocation team came through, noticed he understood his store's inventory better than most planners they'd met, and offered him a job. He moved to Wisconsin two months later and never looked back.In this episode, Chris walks Michael and Jeremy through three decades of planning across some of the most recognizable brands in retail and consumer goods — Justice, Vera Bradley, Champion, Hanes, Paula's Choice, and more. The stories are wild. There's the COVID sweatpants shortage at Hanes, where demand flipped overnight from 1.4 tops per bottom to 4 bottoms per top. The Paula's Choice TikTok boom that nobody saw coming. The Vera Bradley pattern test in San Antonio that got ruined because collectors cleaned out the whole floor and listed it on eBay.And through all of it, Chris's advice is remarkably consistent: start in the weeds. Go down to the SKU lot, the size curve, the store-class-week level. That's where the real signal lives — and where most planning systems still fall short.Topics covered:How shelf life requirements by channel turn a simple forecast into a supply chain puzzleWhat COVID did to demand curves — and why pre-2020 history is basically useless in some categoriesWhy new product forecasting always relies on sales input (and why that's a feature, not a bug)The outlier principle: pay attention to what's on the clearance rackCareer advice for early-stage supply chain and planning professionals