Steve Beck passed away on December 30, 2011. In many ways, the retail world will not quite be the same without him. He was a character the likes of which we may never see again. In the mid-80’s he had the cheek to take something as mammoth as Merchandise Planning and put it on a PC (which back then had some limitations like 640k of real memory, 40 mb disk drives and no built-in GUI — all DOS all the time).

When Steve came to our Canton, Massachusetts offices at Morse Shoe (owner of the late Fayva Shoe chain) and announced that British Shoe was live on his new planning system Arthur, we sat up and took notice. He made a good presentation to our board and we ended up buying the thing. I was too young to be nervous, so I went ahead and took the project on from the IT side. It was an adventure.

Tom Redd, now at SAP and an original Arthur marketing guy, is fond of saying we were the first company to make it through the explode — the point where total store plans are smashed against total department plans to create a department plan by store. It took a bunch of English programmers, the biggest PC’s we could find and a lot of prayers to make that happen. Frank Zarrello also claims the title, and who am I to say differently? In any case, we both climbed the Arthur mountain (as my friend Judy Newdom described it), and got the thing running. Those of you using JDA planning today might want to honor Steve’s vision. It was, in its day, completely revolutionary.

Steve’s adventures sure didn’t end with Arthur. Just a quick look at his LinkedIn profile pretty much says it all. I confess I didn’t realize just how many more innovations he brought forward.

• Inventor of IPO™, a leading lifecycle pricing solution.
• Inventor of IMPACT™, a web based portal for measuring future weather impacts on consumer
• demand.
• Developed WEATHERPLANNER™ a web based consumer event and activity planning system based on long range weather forecasts.
• Inventor of ARTHUR™, a leading Merchandise Planning and Decision Support solution.
• Inventor of TRIM™, the first retail ERP.
• Co-Inventor of RMS™, the first fully automated color and size allocation and distribution system for fashion retailing.
• In depth knowledge of: Retail Strategy and Operations as well as Strategic, Financial, Merchandise and Assortment Planning, Space Planning, Allocation, Merchandising, Analytics, Optimization and Logistics.

Over the course of my professional life, I have consulted to many of the most interesting and successful retailers on four continents, such as: Ann Taylor, PVH, Toys R’Us, Federated Stores, Kmart, Limited Brands, Polo Ralph Lauren, Sears, Sears PLC, Brown Shoe, Payless, Casual Male, Talbots, Foschini, Pep Stores, Edgars, Duty Free Shoppers, Marshalls, TJ Maxx, Woolworth SA, Woolworths (Aus), GAP, BHS, NEXT PLC, M&S, Burton Group, and The Sports Authority, Carhartt and The Children’s Place.

I don’t think I could have said it better. I just called him the Godfather of Planning.

Steve — Rest in Peace. The retail world remembers you with great fondness.