Looking for a summary of a company's business strategy? The 10-K annual report form is one possible source (available on the company's internet site, through Mergent or the SEC's Edgar database
In this example, Ross Stores explains its strategy of sourcing and pricing. This material usually comes in their business description, which is Part 1 of a standard 10-K format and early in the doc. You may also do a CTRL-F word find for keywords.
Here's a partial excerpt from their 2013 10-K:
By purchasing later in the merchandise buying cycle than department, specialty, and discount stores, we are able to take advantage of imbalances between retailers’ demand for products and manufacturers’ supply of those products. Unlike most department and specialty stores, we typically do not require that manufacturers provide promotional allowances, co-op advertising allowances, return privileges, split shipments, drop shipments to stores, or delayed deliveries of merchandise.
For most orders, only one delivery is made to one of our four distribution centers. These flexible requirements further enable our buyers to obtain significant discounts on in-season purchases.
The majority of the apparel and apparel-related merchandise that we offer in all of our stores is acquired through opportunistic purchases created by manufacturer overruns and canceled orders both during and at the end of a season. These buys are referred to as “close-out” and “packaway” purchases. Close-outs can be shipped to stores in-season, allowing us to get
in-season goods into our stores at lower prices.
Packaway merchandise is purchased with the intent that it will be stored in our warehouses until a later date, which may even be the beginning of the same selling season in the following year. Packaway purchases are an effective method of increasing the percentage of prestige and national brands at competitive savings within our merchandise assortments. Packaway merchandise is mainly fashion basics and, therefore, not usually affected by shifts in fashion trends.
