Eva Klein
Head of Supply Chain Excellence | Roastmarket GmbH
"We have been able to reduce our assortment by 15% and at the same time increase our availability of goods by 2%"
Coffee connoisseurs and top roasters come together at Roastmarket. Founded in Frankfurt in 2014, the company is one of Germany’s largest specialist coffee retailers. It sells over 4,000 products from the world of coffee online – from coffee beans and ground coffee to matching machines and a wide range of accessories.
In 2021, Roastmarket broke the one million order mark for the first time, managing to double this figure in just one year. However, the company’s in-house IT team could not keep up with this growth, which is why the company prioritised the introduction of special software for sales, inventory, and purchasing planning over the implementation of an ERP system.
The business opted for Slimstock’s supply chain planning platform, which Roastmarket wanted to go live with before the peak season. Thanks to Slimstock’s many years of experience, extensive expertise, and the ability to implement the platform quickly, this was possible. Utilising predefined parameters, the software was ready for use at Roastmarket after just three months and the company benefited from far-reaching improvements even beyond its original targets.
Before implementing Slim4, Roastmarket worked with an in-house order system, but this led to heavy micromanagement: “We focused on each individual order, calculated and monitored each order line individually – day after day, week after week,” explains Eva Klein, Head of Supply Chain Excellence at Roastmarket.
Simple assortment planning
Zisi Nikolaou, Head of Category Management, adds: “We can now create a separate sales forecast for each individual product and therefore determine the optimum order quantity – even if the sales of the products remained constant over time.”
The introduction of Slimstock’s platform was intended to replace the business’ existing time-consuming procedure and significantly increase the automation of the processes. The aim was also to achieve an optimum balance between product availability and capital invested in stock as well to align the product assortment and service levels more closely with the wishes and needs of customers.
However, a complete change was out of the question. Instead, Roastmarket wanted to imitate previous ordering behaviour as far as possible in order to not jeopardise its partnership-based cooperation with its suppliers. As the software change took place shortly before the important seasonal peak and the hectic end-of-year business, Slim4 was able to prove its value straight away.
“With Slimstock, we now have a modern and intuitive tool in use that also allows KPI-focused management of the product range,” says Zisi Nikolaou.
“Slimstock’s platform is based upon logical parameters that help us to anticipate future ordering behaviour,” explains Eva Klein.
Instead of manually checking all products individually as in the past, the team can now work in a targeted and prioritised manner and can see at a glance, for example, which products are at risk of being out of stock. Daily ABC analyses also make it quick and easy to identify both positive and negative trends, view bundling performance, and identify seasonal peculiarities.
“Based on this, we can adjust forecasts with the help of Slimstock, and the system automatically calculates the optimum order quantity,” explains Nikolaou. The service level and EOQ (Economic Order Quantity) made possible by Slim4 were also new for Roastmarket. “Slimstock can do many things better that we couldn’t even consider when working with each individual order,” says Klein. “The software relieves us of many work steps where mathematical approaches are the better solution.”
15% reduction in the stocked range
As a result, Roastmarket benefits from a significant optimisation of operational purchasing processes: This is reflected, among other things, in a 15% reduction in the stocked range, which in turn has a positive impact on capital invested in stock. In addition, the amount of checking and ordering work required by the planners per week has been halved and the time can be used for more valuable tasks, such as optimising the product range and supply chain and ensuring the availability of goods.
The latter has already improved by two percentage points in the short period of time simply by using Slimstock’s platform, while the software has also created completely new possibilities: for example, automated stock control using service levels to determine when and for which products out-of-stock is the better option compared to higher purchasing volumes and the associated capital commitment. “Slimstock has made our ordering system significantly more efficient – both in terms of costs and time,” summarises Nikolaou.
The next steps
Roastmarket is now well equipped for further growth. Among other things, Roastmarket will extend the use of Slismtock to provide even richer information to increase the degree of automation and continuously improve the defined KPIs. Furthermore, the company would like to utilise the data provided by Slimstock more internally, such as for budget or personnel capacity planning and S&OP processes, which will also be supported by Slimstock.
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