DIY Forecasting:
How HELLWEG Conquered Inventory Optimization

Those who watch this webinar can expect to come away with an understanding of:

• The top challenges faced by DIY retailers worldwide
• How an agile data-driven solution helped Hellweg identify and solve unique inventory issues
• How Hellweg adapted to inventory complexities that arose from the COVID-19 pandemic
• How Hellweg has improved product availability and slow-mover management with optimized, data-based forecasting

DIY retailers know all too well the struggle to ensure that the right inventory will be in stock to meet inconsistent customer demand, particularly when dealing with slow movers and seasonal products. In this on-demand webinar, two supply chain experts from DIY retailer Hellweg, Bastian Theis, Head of Store Supply, and Christian Althaus, Head of Supply Chain, discuss how they identified and overcame these challenges, particularly when COVID-19 caused further complexities for the business.

"Our old system made an order proposal to each store based on the sales of the previous year, but as every year is different, the gut feeling of the person sitting in front of the proposal had a large influence," says Theis. "These [ordering] decisions had to be taken a thousand times a day, so we believe it's better to have a centralized and homogeneous approach."

Althaus explains that implementing an effective centralized and agile solution helped solve some of their inventory issues while optimizing stock levels of their 60,000+ item assortment and alleviating the worries of their decision-makers.  

The goal for Hellweg, says Althaus, "is to improve the system [with technology and data] instead of trying to fix something with a manual order." When combined with the experience of Hellweg's personnel and the understanding of the business needs and local store patterns, RELEX helped improve each forecast. Althaus notes that this new centralized process "is not a revolution" but an "evolution" in DIY inventory management.