It’s no secret – the smartest online retail businesses use integrated, data-fuelled forecasting technology to stay ahead in today’s recessionary e-commerce climate and importantly, optimize their cash flow.
How? With access to smart purchasing recommendations and sales forecasting, you’re always able to purchase the right amount of inventory at the right time and place, and avoid the risk of costly stockouts and over-stocking of inventory – a potential killer for your bottom line.
What’s more, with supply chain issues, a cost-of-living crisis and high inflation rates to navigate, it’s even more important for retailers to be hyper vigilant over their inventory purchasing decisions. Having full visibility over your sales, potential profits/losses and lead time information ensures that not only will your best-sellers be consistently stocked, you’ll know which slow-moving products are clogging up your warehouse, costing you thousands in trapped capital.
Why not follow the example of the four great brands below? Each of these forward-thinking enterprises knew that their inventory processes were falling short and losing them essential revenue, so they transformed the way they do business with Inventory Planner.
Don’t join the legions of retailers taking damaging hits to their profits in today’s chaotic e-commerce environment. Read these stories to get inspired by how you could optimize inventory planning in your business.
Snow
With huge stars such as Kim Kardashian, Chris Pratt and Ellen Degeneres adding some A-list sparkle to its influencer campaigns, oral cosmetics brand Snow became a runaway success in the US, with sales tipping $100M a year. With such immense growth in just a few short years, it’s no surprise that one of Snow’s biggest problems was frequent stockouts, which was frustrating their customers and losing sales. Seeking an advanced sales forecasting tool to smartly manage demand and ensure they were always in stock, Snow optimized their systems with Inventory Planner.
“Inventory Planner has been phenomenal for us. It factors in seasonality so that we can look at the data and instantly say, ‘ok, we need to order 100,000 of that item, not 10,000 – otherwise we’re going to run out in two months.”
Trevor Martin, Vice-President of Operations, Snow
With access to advanced forecasting data which factors in peak periods and promotions, Snow has been able to order the perfect amount at the right times of year to successfully eliminate all stock-related issues – ensuring sparkling customer reviews as well as smiles.
Bells of Steel
After the pandemic-fuelled hunger for indoor gym equipment sent fitness brand Bells of Steel’s operations into overdrive, Founder Kaevon Khoozani had to make some cut-throat decisions to ensure his firm’s survival. He hired 39 staff, opened more retail outlets and warehouses, and completely overhauled its backend software; using our Inventory Planner tool to ensure broader inventory visibility and optimize their manual purchasing and forecasting systems.
“Not only has [Inventory Planner] saved us time on manual processes and improved our cross-department communication, but it’s enabled us to allocate costs correctly. Basically we have full visibility of what’s going on, therefore a tighter grasp on our spend. The impact of that has been huge for our bottom line.”
Kaevon Khoozani, Founder of Bells of Steel.
Bells of Steel gained 360-degree visibility on its multichannel, multi-warehouse inventory – and with its Bundling and Components feature, could easily replenish individual components of its flagship product, the at-home gym kit. This meant that rather than blindly selling more and more, the brand could boost profits smartly – with accurate, data-driven sales forecasting for all products and locations.
It was more than a success story for Bells of Steel; Khoozani’s courageous decision-making in the face of crisis meant the brand grew from $3m to an incredible $15m in revenue in only 18 months.
Furniturebox
“The data Inventory Planner has generated for us has been everything, absolutely everything. We couldn’t have managed the pandemic and achieved such growth without it.”
James Ewens, Head of E-Commerce at Furniturebox.
It was a perfect storm that led South West UK-based homeware brand, Furniturebox to epic growth levels during the pandemic. No one could have predicted the huge online surge for new furniture that came from global lockdowns – but Furniturebox was prepared with a surplus of stock due to a recent error with their shipping operator. As an existing Inventory Planner customer, the team was able to intelligently manage their stock levels to meet the influx of orders and maintain customer service throughout – leading them to an incredible 267% growth rate that year (2020/21).
With the immense success, the thriving furniture company was able to expand its product range from 4,000 to 11,000 SKUs, and build a dedicated e-commerce team, whose staff use Inventory Planner not only for smart purchasing decisions, but also to inform product analysis and marketing campaigns.
Jimmy Lion
Launched in 2014, Jimmy Lion is a fashion-conscious socks brand selling quality, combed cotton socks featuring everything from flamingos to ET motifs. After adopting Inventory Planner as part of its shift to the Brightpearl retail operating system, Jimmy Lion found it could complete its inventory processes a lot faster – 3 times faster, in fact – and ditch its tedious, Excel-based sales forecasting systems.
“We’re a seasonal business – we do a significant proportion of our sales in the run up to Christmas. Being able to accurately forecast our stock needs using Inventory Planner has been a huge help for us – we no longer have to spend hours on spreadsheets!”
Alvaro Gomez, Co-Founder of Jimmy Lion.
To see how Inventory Planner can transform your inventory and purchasing processes, sign up for a FREE 14 day trial today.