BERWYN, PA, December 15, 2009 — 4R Systems, Inc., a leading provider of advanced inventory and supply chain solutions which help retailers significantly increase profits by optimizing their inventory and related supply chain decisions, announced today that The Vitamin Shoppe has been utilizing the 4R solution since early 2008.
“4R’s store and DC inventory solutions have helped us drive significant improvements in our inventory efficiency and in-stocks over the last two years,” said Tony Truesdale, President & Chief Merchant of The Vitamin Shoppe. “4R’s helped us drive in-stocks from the low 90% range to 96.5% while simultaneously increasing turn from 3.1 to 3.42. The service based solution gave us an unprecedented level of connection between our inventory management decisions and their impact on our business.”
4R’s unique profit optimized inventory solutions are delivered to clients in a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model. This model is augmented by 4R business consultants who work closely with clients to tailor the output to a client’s unique business needs and constraints. 4R’s solutions help retailers drive profit improvements of hundreds of basis points when optimizing key decisions such as store and DC inventories for replenishment items, allocation of seasonal and fashion items, vendor ordering and markdown.
In the case of The Vitamin Shoppe, 4R receives sales and inventory data on a weekly basis. 4R in turn applies its advanced inventory and supply chain algorithms to that data to generate profit optimized inventory levels. These results are merged into The Vitamin Shoppe’s existing systems and drive store shipments and vendor orders. In terms of implementation, since the system leveraged existing infrastructure, there was very little development required to implement.
“The Vitamin Shoppe is a great client to work with,” said Jiri Nechleba, President & CEO of 4R Systems. “Their team is focused on making The Vitamin Shoppe a world-class retailer with great business performance. They were focused on results and when they found an answer that worked, they moved very quickly to capitalize on it. We completed our 3-step process (evaluate, prove, implement) in 7 months. During that period, we analyzed historical data to estimate the profit improvement opportunity, we did a live pilot to prove out the results and we implemented the store inventory solution in April 2008. We completed implementation of the DC solution in the summer of 2008 and, since then, The Vitamin Shoppe has been ordering directly off of 4R’s DC inventory models.”
“4R has allowed us to refocus our resources on not just managing our inventory but improving our supply chain,” said Jason Scheffer, Director of Inventory at The Vitamin Shoppe. “When we implemented 4R, we quickly saw 4R’s models set inventory at levels that made more sense and performed better. That allowed us to free up people who had been managing those levels and refocus them on working with vendors to drive better vendor service levels and lead-times. The combination of 4R with ournsupply chain improvement efforts has been the key to meeting our aggressive inventory management goals.”
Leave a Reply