Marketing-leading Inventory Planning Solution For Sports Brands

Proactively plan inventory to score bigger profits

Keep things running when it counts. Proactively act on trends and boost your profit with our intelligent, reliable inventory planning solution.

Inventory Planner constantly monitors customer demand as well as seasonality, marketing and promotions to accurately forecast demand. Then it tells you exactly what to buy and when to buy it, so you always have the right inventory ready to ship.

Top features for sports brands

Forecast accurately, buy confidently

Get clever forecasts across all your products (including seasonal). Inventory Planner constantly analyzes your selling patterns to accurately forecast demand. Then it tells you exactly what to buy and when to order.

Add in flexibility to avoid over- and under-purchasing

Ensure your inventory always arrives when your customers want it. Easily adjust lead times at SKU (or any) level and increase ideal stock cover days to avoid overbuying while keeping your stockout risk low.

Know what’s draining your cash

Inventory Planner highlights your overstocked items alongside key info including the cost of each overstocked item, so you can quickly and precisely see which items to liquidate to release cash.

Easy bundle and assembly forecasting

Save time and avoid overbuying certain components and underbuying others with accurate forecasting and individual buying recommendations for all components.

Optimize container loading and your warehouse space

Whether you’re purchasing bulky products like treadmills or the raw materials for supplements, use Inventory Planner to factor in shelf space capacity at every warehouse and scale your purchase orders to max out shipping containers. Cut costs and optimize storage.

Actionable inventory insights

200+ inventory metrics help you make profit-driven decisions while our Google Analytics integration means you can assess a product’s page views with its sales to optimize merchandizing.

Optimize your buying budgets

If the value of your sporting goods inventory is high, or if you stock lots of seasonal items,Inventory Planner’s market-leading Open-to-Buy (OTB) feature lets you plan your buying budgets by month or retail weeks, based on your key metrics such as previous years’ revenue, expected margins and units.

Smart multi-warehouse inventory planning

Accurately forecasts customer demand for each of your inventory locations including your own warehouses, physical stores, Amazon FBA and 3PLs. Get smart purchasing and warehouse transfer recommendations that balance your inventory across locations to better meet demand, without ordering new stock.

Time-saving PO management

If you use lots of suppliers, including some overseas, you can place purchase orders directly from your buying recommendations. Pre-set your supplier information such as currency, minimum order quantity and payment terms so they are automatically applied, saving you hours every week.

"I tell other merchants that they can’t afford not to have Inventory Planner. Say you hold $1 million in inventory and, at a very conservative estimate, Inventory Planner improves your inventory ordering and investments by 10% a year (for us, it’s actually higher than 10%). That would result in a saving of $100,000 a year."

Michael Tomchin, Founder and CEO at Cycology

Get your customer demand forecasts and inventory buying recommendations

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Faq

Frequently Asked Questions

1. Who is Inventory Planner for?

Inventory Planner is the market-leading inventory planning software that is designed to help retailers, e-commerce brands, wholesalers and manufacturing merchants to make data-driven, profit-boosting inventory purchasing decisions based on reliable customer demand predictions, with different supply patterns factored in.

We support 2,600+ worldwide brands from startups to billion-dollar companies in every industry imaginable – from apparel and sporting goods to FMCG.

If your business holds inventory in your own warehouses, brick and mortar stores, or if you use Amazon FBA or 3PLs, and you want to reduce your excess inventory or safety stock ratio while keeping stockout risk low, Inventory Planner is for you.

2. Do I still need Inventory Planner if I already have an Inventory Management System (IMS)?

Short answer: yes! Longer answer: Inventory Management Systems are useful for tracking goods, but they don’t help you forecast demand and plan your inventory purchasing, especially when market trends are rapidly changing and consumer demand is unpredictable. Inventory Planner does.

In a nutshell, if you’re using an IMS, but still experiencing out of stock or excess stock issues, you should try Inventory Planner.

To learn more about the difference between an IMS and Inventory Planner, and pick the right system for your business, take a look at this guide.

3. Should I book a demo or start a 14-day free trial?

A virtual demo with one of our pros is the best and fastest way to see exactly how Inventory Planner will work specifically for your businesses, without needing to connect and configure your data yourself.

However, we understand you might prefer to dive straight in and explore for yourself (especially if you’re a demand forecasting or inventory planning specialist) so we also offer a 14-day free trial.

4. How is Inventory Planner different from other providers?

We’re proud to stand out from the crowd in a number of ways, including…

We’re true leaders in our field: Unlike generic inventory softwares, Inventory Planner is a market-leading specialized solution. We started back in 2012 (when inventory planning wasn’t even a ‘thing’!) and we’ve spent more than a decade fine-tuning our forecasting and inventory planning models so they get results, even in turbulent times.
Our forecasting is transparent and customizable: We believe you can only make informed decisions when you fully understand your data. With Inventory Planner, you’ll know exactly how your forecasting has been calculated (and you can tweak it to suit your needs), so you can take our forecasts and purchasing recommendations and use them to help you meet your goals.
We’re always evolving, just like the retail market: As part of Sage Group, we’re able to invest heavily and regularly in our innovation, so we’re always a step ahead of our competition when it comes to offering reliable forecasting and intelligent purchasing recommendations, even as markets shift.

5. Is it easy for me to implement and configure Inventory Planner on my own?

There are two options:

Implement and learn the system on your own
Inventory Planner is built to be intuitive, so you can self-implement the system and configure your forecasting strategies if you have experience with forecasting softwares and the bandwidth available.
Faster onboarding, led by us (RECOMMENDED)
If you’re looking for optimal time-to-value, we recommend our guided onboarding, led by us. This is the faster and hassle-free way to get set up for success. Our forecasting pros will get you and your team up and running on Inventory Planner quickly (on average within 30 days), including system integrations, data migration, bespoke forecasting strategy configurations, tests and intuitive training. It’s the best way to ensure you get the most from Inventory Planner.

6. What's the SKU limit with Inventory Planner?

Inventory Planner is a scalable solution built to work for businesses of any size, from startups to billion-dollar companies – so there is no SKU limit.

Plus, with our Data Warehouse Connectors, data from any source can be seamlessly synced with Inventory Planner (which means no siloed data or delayed syncs for businesses with large data sets across various platforms).

It starts with your data

Your inventory and sales data is the foundation on which our accurate forecasting and inventory planning is built on. That’s why we’ve made it easy to seamlessly and securely add it to Inventory Planner.

No matter where you store your data (whether it's your online stores, inventory and order management systems, warehouse management systems, or ERP, EDI, accounting tools and spreadsheets); we’ll get you connected so that you get forecasting and inventory buying recommendations that are accurate, reliable and always up-to-date.

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