SHOPKEEPERS can make more money if they display clothes to suit the weather precisely, claims Strategic Weather Services of Wayne, Pennsylvania, in international patent application W0 95/24012.
Shops already plan their stock and project sales figures by the season. They also log all point-of-sale information from the checkouts onto a computer. But, says SWS, they underestimate the impact of the weather on peoples鈥� buying habits week by week.
The company鈥檚 Long-range Executive Weather Information System, or LEWIS, works in two stages. It looks back over thirty years of weather and sales patterns, correlating changes in the weather with sales performance to produce a 鈥渄eweatherised鈥� retail history. Then, by taking current weather forecasts, it produces a 鈥渨eatherised鈥� prediction of the sales pattern over the next week or so. So shops will know when to put warm-weather clothes on the shelves and move galoshes to the warehouse.
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