The problem considered is that of forecasting demand for single-period products before the period starts. We study this problem for the case of a mail order apparel company that needs to order its products pre-season. The lack of historical demand data implies that other sources of data are...

We study the case of a catalogue/internet mail order retailer selling seasonal productsand receiving large numbers of commercial returns. Returned products arriving beforethe end of the selling season can be resold if there is sufficient demand. A single orderis placed before the season starts....