San Francisco — May 14, 2003 — Retailer Party America has deployed a demand planning and replenishment solution from Evant in a bid to address its complex seasonal merchandising needs.
Party America is one of the largest retail chains of consumer party supplies in the United States and the largest chain based west of the Rocky Mountains, with 36 stores located in every major city in Colorado and Utah and in California. The retailer carries highly seasonal products for celebrating major holidays and other occasions, in addition to regular party supplies.
"There is no retail business more seasonal than Party America's," said Marty Allen, CEO of the retailer. "Each of our stores makes seasonal assortment changes a least once a month, and many times twice a month."
Moreover, Allen noted that the stores carry about 15,000 everyday items, making planning and replenishment very time consuming at the store level, with store mangers spending upward of 10 to 15 hours a week trying to keep the stores in stock.
Currently the retailer is deploying Evant Demand Planning and Replenishment, an initiative that Allen said would allow Party America to move the replenishment process to corporate headquarters, freeing store managers to spend their time focusing on customer service.
Evant said that its demand planning and replenishment solution uses a statistical forecasting engine that combines forecasting techniques with demand cleansing, day-of-the-week and seasonal profiling tools. The system helps retailers to forecast demand more accurately by automatically adapting to changing demand patterns.
Nancy Williams, replenishment manager at Party America, said the solution would enable the company's replenishment analysts to more accurately anticipate stock needs and increase ordering accuracy on more than 15,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs).
"The Evant solution also provides business intelligence tools that deliver complex trending analyses on inventory performance, which will help the company increase inventory turns over time," Williams added.
