Burt's Bees Improves On-Shelf Availability

Burt's Bees, a leading manufacturer of earth-friendly natural personal care products, chooses Retail Solutions Inc.'s On-Shelf Management solution to reduce out-of-stocks at a third leading U.S. retailer.

 

"We believe that phantom inventory is one of the major drivers of our out-of-stocks," says Pete Alberse, senior vice president of Sales, Burt's Bees. "Retail Solutions has developed a great algorithm to identify phantom inventory before it creates on-shelf availability issue, and they also offer actionable, proven processes that ensure systematic action is being taken on the basis of their alerts so that we can avoid losing sales."

 

Retail Solutions On-Shelf Management aims to correct perpetual inventory before it even affects replenishment, identifies out-of-stocks earlier and more accurately than traditional approaches but also systematically determines their root cause to prevent their reoccurrence. The solution leverages proprietary algorithms developed over several years of research and development in partnership with the world's largest CPG companies.

 

Using Retail Solutions' insights, Burt's Bees will adopt a dual approach to improve on-shelf availability:

--Burt's Bees will compensate perpetual inventory inaccuracies by leveraging Retail Solutions' proven"Distribution Center Push" approach--Alerts will also be channeled to merchandisers to drive phantom inventory correction at the store level

 

Burt's Bees also has implemented Retail Solutions at two retailers in the drug channel, where the customer teams use its Retail Execution Management platform to transform retailer downstream data, such as point-of-sale and inventory data, into actionable reports, insights and alerts.

 

"We are in search of sales growth and competitive advantage in all channels, at each retailer," adds Alberse."Leveraging retailer downstream data both for visibility purposes but also to drive systematic improvements is a core strategy for Burt's Bees. Retail Solutions helps us achieve this strategy by providing us with insights helping us determine where we should invest and apply resources both tactically, at the team-by-team or even at the store level and strategically, across retailers and channels."