Atlanta—Dec. 4, 2013—Direct Wines, a large online wine retailer, successfully deployed advanced, end-to-end planning, promotion, forecasting and fulfillment solutions from Predictix, a provider of cloud-based, predictive analytics solutions for retailers. The applications went live last month, and can support the current operation and future growth strategy of Direct Wines' international omni-channel business.
Direct Wines is one of the world’s largest online wine merchants, selling more than 40 million bottles a year to more than 750,000 customers. Based in the U.K., it is a fast-growing, global company that serves customers in the U.K., Australia, Hong Kong and Germany, and via licensed retail and wholesale partners in the U.S. Direct Wines is an omni-channel business, selling via catalog, online and an estate of retail stores under the Laithwaites brand. It also provides wine clubs to customers of The Wall Street Journal, Zagat, Virgin and the Sunday Times.
Prior to selecting Predictix, Direct Wines had a number of operational and business challenges in its supply chain that were becoming an obstacle to the company's rapid growth. Direct Wines generates high sales volumes for products that are often produced in limited quantities by brand or vintage, and then sold individually or in a multitude of mixed cases. This, together with dynamic and sophisticated direct marketing, created the need for a particularly flexible solution that enabled the company's supply chain to respond in real time to changes in actual and anticipated demand.
Direct Wines sought a cohesive system that lets buyers and merchandisers plan, generate promotions, forecast and source products in a coordinated way. It needed an end-to-end demand and supply planning solution, with in-day promotion and fulfillment decisions, and the ability to plan promotions and offers in near-real time to deal with daily demand changes.
Direct Wines found that traditional software solutions were unable to handle its complex model and turned to Predictix for a suite of cloud-based applications that were tailored to its specific requirements in:
- Merchandise financial planning.
- Creating and managing mixed wine offers.
- Promotion planning.
- Offer planning.
- Demand planning.
With Predictix, Direct Wines now has better alignment between its marketing, planning, merchandising and supply chain operations, with a structured approach to range planning and the ability to plan offers that meet revenue targets in the overall marketing plan. Direct Wines also has greater visibility into forecasted demand and projected stock requirements across all channels. This helps drive greater inventory efficiency, and reduce the need for case and shelf-keeping unit (SKU) substitution by ensuring that Direct Wines' buyers purchase the right wine in the right quantities at the right time on a global basis.
“Predictix helped us start to break down the walls, and eliminate the silos between marketing, merchandising and supply chain,” said Simon McMurtrie, CEO, Direct Wines. “For the first time, we have an end-to-end solution that fits our unique business model. We set a number of ambitious goals for this initiative, and it has been a great team effort between Direct Wines and Predictix.”
According to John Simon, CEO, Predictix, "Our unique cloud-based model allowed Predictix to solve some of the most difficult challenges that retailers face. They now have far deeper, more accurate visibility into their global operations, which enables Direct Wines to respond much more effectively to demand signals and take advantage of new opportunities for growth."