Challenge

A clothing company sells multiple brands of clothing for children, women, and men at Walmart stores. The company releases new designs each spring, summer, fall, and winter.

Typically, the company will send most of the clothing for a design to the stores at the start of each season. Yet, it retains some inventory to supplement gaps in store inventory as they arise.

As inventories at the Walmart stores deplete, the clothing company sends additional inventory by means of either:

• an SSO (Store Specific Order), using the company’s inventory, or
• a Warehouse Push, using inventory on hand at Walmart’s warehouses.

Due to the complexity involved in allocating inventory to Walmart stores and warehouses, the company sought out a technical solution from mOOkstr.

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Constraints

Unlike most Walmart suppliers, the clothing company manages thousands of items. For each clothing design, there are multiple sizes, colors, and sometimes graphic prints. Each variation is assigned a unique Walmart item number.

Given 4,000+ Walmart stores in the US, the company can allocate inventory in a myriad of combinations. The end goal is to send clothing where it is most needed and likely to be sold.

The clothing company requested a solution for allocating inventory that it could manage independently and make changes to as needed.

Solution

The clothing company partnered with mOOkstr to build a set of Excel spreadsheets to make SSO and Warehouse Push recommendations for a designated set of items.

To perform allocations, the company imports Retail Link data from a standard recipe into these spreadsheets. Iterative logic in these spreadsheets allocates inventory to Walmart stores or warehouses as appropriate. The company can select from a few different algorithms.

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The company can choose:

• To allocate all remaining inventory for the items until depleted, or
• To allocate enough inventory for the items to meet goals for: Minimum required inventory in stores, and Weeks of Supply (WOS) On Hand in stores.

In allocating inventory, the spreadsheets use an iterative process to make sure that vendor and warehouse packs remain whole. Priority is also given to stores with higher POS Sales rates of the items if there is too little inventory to meet goals.

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Results

With the technical solution designed by mOOkstr, the company could now complete SSO and Warehouse Push allocations quickly, freeing up company staff to work on other projects. The solution also provides documentation to justify inventory allocations with Walmart.

Lastly, the company increased sales of items by ensuring that clothing inventory did not remain idle but ended up in the hands of Walmart customers.