Stock Consolidation - Future Business Systems

CASE STUDY
STOCK CONSOLIDATION
Swimwear Galore - Carla Zampatti - Ozmosis - FSW
Harmony’s Stock Consolidation
module makes bottom line
improvements to footwear and
fashion retailers
Having the right stock in the right place
at the right time is a basic principle of
profitable retailing.
Get this wrong and retailers will lose sales
with out-of-stocks in some stores and
suffer poor cash flows by being overstocked
in others.
Andrew Ingersole
Swimwear Galore
For high-value item retailing such as
fashion, apparel, and footwear, it’s no wonder that merchandise managers invest a lot of time figuring out what’s going on in their stores. And when a style’s end-of-life approaches, the markdowns can be severe.
These problems can be solved by implementing fully integrated specialist
computer systems that handle POS transactions through to merchandise
management.
Good systems breathe the necessary life into a retailer’s merchandising
department by using the technology to highlight the exceptions – directing
the merchandisers to make decisions on out-of-line situations.
This approach can save workload, increase sales, increase margins, and
increase cash flow all at the same time.
Allegra Spendra, General Manager at leading fashion house Carla
Zampatti says “We use the stock consolidation module that comes
as part of our Harmony stock management software. We find that
stock consolidation is an essential part of our business – it eliminates
both salesperson and customer frustration that generally occurs with
fragmented sizing because we can shift stock to stores to maintain full
size ranges.”
Surfwear retailer Ozmosis also acknowledges that stores need to have
full size ranges for any styles they stock in a shop and so also turned to
automating the micro-management of store size ranges. Alex Hughes,
Buyer’s Stock Controller for the chain of 17 Victorian surfwear stores says
“We never used to manage size ranges to the depth we do now because
it was too manually intensive. We have implemented Harmony’s stock
consolidation module, and we have improved our processes by an order of
magnitude.”
About Future Business Systems
Future Business Systems (FBS) is an Australian software
development company supporting Enterprise Management
Systems since the mid 1980’s. They supply comprehensive
software solutions based around their Harmony software
suite consisting of over 45 integrated software modules.
FBS supports customer use of its software by providing
training and installation services, and offers on-going
hardware and networking support services. FBS also offers
web development services, to deliver software solutions to
suit businesses operating across multiple channels.
FBS has a growing list of over 250 client businesses engaged
in manufacturing, import and distribution, and retailing located
across Australia and New Zealand, Hong Kong, Malaysia and
China.
Retail clients span chains with 4 to 250 shops and operate
within a large range of sectors including apparel, footwear,
manchester, giftware, and home wares. Well known clients
include Blue Illusion, Carla Zampatti, My Size, Sires, Tarocash,
YD, Events, Famous Footwear, Wittners, Lincraft, Pillowtalk,
Swimwear Galore, and Victoria Station.
markdowns by as much as 20% per season – it’s hard to come up with
initiatives that make big differences to the bottom line on a continuous
basis like this”.
Steve Frawley of Frawleys Shoe Stores said that he saves half a day’s
work each time he performs a consolidation compared to the old program
he used, but the real value lies in the integration with store processes.
“Harmony turns recommendations into action at each store” he said.
Having had some practical experience with other software packages prior
to moving across to Harmony, Steve recognises that he has been an early
adopter of the Stock Consolidation software and pushes the boundaries on
the software.
Andrew Ingersole, General Manager at swimwear specialists Swimwear
Galore, another retailer employing the same software, says “On the one
He goes on to say “We estimate that we are reducing end-of-season
FUTURE BUSINESS SYSTEMS PTY LTD
See how Harmony can help your business grow
Telephone: +61 3 9500 1788
Facsimile: +61 3 9500 1766
Email:sales@fbsaust.com.au
Web: www.fbsaust.com.au
Level 1, 204 Balaclava Road,
Caulfield North,Victoria 3161, Australia
CASE STUDY
STOCK CONSOLIDATION
Swimwear Galore - Carla Zampatti - Ozmosis - FSW
Swimwear Galore’s Andrew Ingersole says “My advice to apparel traders
who are consolidating stock manually is that there’s a better way to do it.
If they’re not using Harmony, they’re doing it the hard way.”
Mark Silver, Managing Director of Future Business Systems says “Our
job is to build software that makes a difference to the bottom line of
our client’s businesses. We chose to enhance our stock consolidation
functions because our research showed that we could create wealth for
our customers by presenting the sales information more cleverly than
they had ever seen before. And it really is very gratifying to hear how
much of an improvement this module has been”.
“We agree with Andrew Ingersole that every retailer should have the
benefit of our technology” he says unsurprisingly.
screen at head office, we can see the current stock position and rate of
sale for all or selected stores. We then initiate inter-store stock transfers
by literally dragging units from one shop to another. It really is that
simple.”
“Our ability to get the right stock to the right store has been instrumental
in our growth and reducing the need to write down stock” he says.
“Getting this information to the stores for them to action is easier again.
What was a complicated process of generating report after report can be
done in a few simple steps, and the stores then have all the information
they need to move the stock to where it needs to go.”
Carla Zampatti’s Allegra Spendra says “our stores look better due to the
reduced fragmentation, and the racks in stores where the items were
slow movers are freed up to receive more of their particular best sellers.”
We know that stock consolidation makes a very significant contribution
to our sales and our bottom line. Harmony has live stock information so it
makes the stock consolidation process even easier” she says.
“We work closely with our customers to ensure they are able to gain the
full benefit that the module has to offer.
Each customer has slightly different requirements, thus facilitating new
features being added which often benefit many other customers.”
FUTURE BUSINESS SYSTEMS PTY LTD
See how Harmony can help your business grow
Telephone: +61 3 9500 1788
Facsimile: +61 3 9500 1766
Email:sales@fbsaust.com.au
Web: www.fbsaust.com.au
Level 1, 204 Balaclava Road,
Caulfield North,Victoria 3161, Australia