Elektroimportøren is a wholesaler and retailer of electrical products, operating 27 stores across Norway and a successful online channel. Elektroimportøren’s Buying and Logistics Director, Andre Hesselroth, sat down with us to share how they are using RELEX for demand forecasting, automated replenishment, allocations, and space optimization to drive sales, operational efficiency, inventory reduction, and availability while improving collaboration between stores and central planning teams.
Transcript
My name is Andre Hesselroth. I’m currently working as Buying and Logistics Director in Elektroimportøren.
We are a full-range provider of electrical equipment, primarily to households but also to commercial markets with solar panels, etcetera. We operate a successful omnichannel model with a very popular webshop and 27 stores across Norway, soon to be 28.
During COVID, we realized that customer demands were changing much faster than before. During lockdown, people stayed in their houses and did a lot of renovation, leading to an increased sales. Our challenge was to adapt our assortment and availability to this changing market.
We were looking for tools and new ways of working in order to make more efficient and controlled changes to our assortment and the way we utilize the space in our stores.
With RELEX, we found the platform for the very important processes of forecasting, replenishment and space management. We saw a platform that we can evolve with together with RELEX into the future into new areas as well.
For example, floor planning. We really liked the modern interface and the development plans RELEX had going forward. With RELEX we wanted to increase our flexibility, our control and ability to adapt to an ever-changing market.
Our main goals were to increase product availability whilst reducing stock levels. Already we have very good results to show for. For example, during the last year’s peak season, we had a quite massive buildup of stock levels in advance of peak, but a subsequent reduction of the peak, something that would not have been possible without the planning tools RELEX gave us.
As our ways of working continue to improve, we will see even better results this year and going forward.
