Problem

The leading brand in eyewear (sunglasses) had over 400 POS across India and was looking to optimize its inventory management and increase its sales.

Solution

The brand planned its range every season around a certain number of categories and shapes (square, flier, traveller, round, cat eye, etc) with colour variants and introduced a few new ones.
We devised an MS excel-based template that auto-mapped the category-shape combo across all POS according to their weight in the range presented. The template took care of display capacity constraints in each POS. Some POS came with storage facilities for faster refill, however, we discouraged the client to stock in advance, relying instead on faster refill for the best movers.

The MS Excel template made it possible for a small Operations team to do correct stock allocation and write regular refill orders for hundreds of POS with a simple drag and drop operation. The template adjusted to the available stock in the warehouse, prioritized it according to the grade of the POS location, and also suggested prioritizing the SKUs.

Outcome

The client saved over 2.5 Crore of excess inventory lying in the front-end which would otherwise be unproductive and recalled to the warehouse at season end.
There was a clear indication on the number of options (variety) required in the channel, as the display capacities in POS were given due respect. This became a key input with a positive impact on the next season’s range planning.