Top-line planTop-Down Forecast

A top-line plan is the top-down view of demand. It's a target — set in revenue, by category, or by channel — that comes from the business's plan or budget, then gets broken down to guide what you need to sell. Where a bottom-up forecast builds up from what each product is actually doing, the top-line plan starts at the top with what the business intends to do and works down.

It's the answer to a different question. The bottom-up forecast asks "what's likely?" The top-line plan asks "what are we aiming for?" Both are needed, and the interesting work happens where they meet.

Where it comes from

The top-line plan isn't built from SKU history — it's set by leadership and finance, and it usually traces back to one of:

• Annual budgets — the revenue number the business has committed to for the year.
• Growth targets — "up 30% year on year", often before anyone has decided exactly which products deliver it.
• Channel plans — how much is expected to come through D2C, wholesale, marketplaces, and retail.
• Buying budgets — how much there is to spend on stock, which caps what can realistically be sold.

These are top-down by nature: they express ambition and commitment, not a roll-up of individual product trends. That's their strength — they carry the business's intent — and also their limitation, because intent on its own doesn't tell you whether it's achievable.

How it works with the bottom-up forecast

The top-line plan only becomes useful when it's reconciled against the bottom-up forecast. On their own, each is half the picture; together they drive the plan.

• When the bottom-up forecast lands below the top-line plan, the gap is your action list. Demand as it stands won't hit the target, so the difference has to be closed deliberately — new launches, promotions, channel pushes. The gap is not a problem with the forecast; it's the work the business has signed up to do.
• When the bottom-up forecast lands above the top-line plan, either the plan is conservative and there's upside to bank, or demand is running ahead of what supply and budget can support — in which case it's the supply side that needs to catch up, not the forecast that needs trimming.

Reconciling the two is the heart of demand planning. The bottom-up forecast keeps the plan honest; the top-line plan keeps the forecast ambitious. Run them separately and you either plan stock to a number nobody can hit, or you forecast your way to last year's results. The planning horizon and seasonality of the range both shape how the target should phase across the year — a flat annual number broken evenly across twelve months rarely matches how demand actually arrives.

Why not just plan to the target

It's tempting to treat the top-line plan as the forecast and order stock against it. That's how brands end up overstocked: ambition becomes the buy, and when demand comes in below target, the excess sits as cash on the shelf. The plan tells you what you want to sell; only the bottom-up forecast, grounded in how products are actually moving, tells you what you're likely to sell. You hit a target by closing the gap with real actions — not by ordering as though the gap weren't there.