When siloed inventory management began causing stockouts and hurting customer service levels, Randa Apparel & Accessories looked to a planning platform to optimize operations.

One of the world’s largest fashion manufacturers, Randa Apparel & Accessories knows all about keeping up with fast changing trends. The company’s reach spans 11 countries and sells products from more than 50 brands including Columbia Sportswear Co., Hanesbrands Inc. and Levi Strauss & Co. through major retailers like Amazon.com Inc., Macy's Inc. and Walmart Inc. 

Randa operates five distinct business divisions — neckwear and jewelry, belts, wallets, seasonal footwear and accessories — and was struggling to optimize inventory, maintain customer service levels and manage thousands of items tagged for each unique retailer. Reallocating identical products between customers was difficult, which frequently led to stockouts even when Randa had inventory on-hand. 

“We never had the visibility to balance out inventory,” says Tim Walter, the company’s chief information officer. “With overseas lead times as long as six months, it was impractical for this situation to continue.” 

Randa solicited help from John Galt Solutions Inc., which implemented its Atlas Planning Platform to improve demand planning, increase visibility and automate inventory and replenishment. The first step was putting Randa’s business divisions on a single integrated platform that standardized and streamlined planning processes for cross-functional collaboration. 

Next, the manufacturer optimized inventory levels using a virtual supply chain network. Virtual warehouses associated to each retailer show product lanes, inventory flow, customer destinations and more. The tool allows Randa to spot potential vulnerabilities and automatically optimize inventory daily for customers — a process that before was handled manually.

Attribute-based forecasting capabilities on the Atlas platform have removed some of the guesswork from seasonal planning, too. The system analyzes trends and measures demand down to print patterns and colors. 

Meanwhile, a new vendor managed inventory (VMI) system allows Randa to provide value-added planning services for each customer location. With VMI, retailers hand over control of their replenishment to Randa, which then recommends weekly restock orders for each store. The system links directly to customers’ enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, giving Randa a view of sales at the retail level and near real-time insight into where and when stock is needed. 

Since implementation, Randa has improved forecast accuracy, optimized inventory investments, increased collaboration between stakeholders and gained visibility into its supply chain for strategic decision making. 

“Having an intelligent planning platform to manage the complexity of Randa’s inventory while continuously optimizing inventory and replenishment to shifts in demand has been a game changer,” Walter says. “With growing channel complexity, John Galt Solutions gives us far more process automation and visibility into our supply chain network.”