Customer video: KICKS and Matas Group
Jun 10, 2025 • 3 minFounded in 1991, KICKS operates 230 stores across Sweden, Norway, and Finland, alongside a strong e-commerce presence. Their mission is to become the premier beauty destination in the Nordics. Johnny Rolsted, Head of Supply Planning at Matas Group, and Sara Vannerstrom, Team Manager of Supply Chain Planning at KICKS, share how RELEX Diagnostics is helping them transform their operations, eliminate manual spreadsheets, improve seasonal forecasting accuracy, and drive customer satisfaction in stores and online.
Transcript
Johnny Rolsted: My name is Johnny Rolsted, working for Matas Group. I am, the Head of Supply Planning in Nordic. In Matas, we have, we are very strong on the Danish market. We have 265 stores.
We have a big web shop supporting 25-30% of our sales. There are around 2,500 people working at at store-level, and 350 working on headquarters. In recent years, we have a joint venture with, with KICKS.
Sara Vannerstrom: My name is Sara Vannerstrom, I am the Team Manager at Supply Chain Planning team at KICKS.
We report directly to Matas and Johnny. We are, KICKS are a beauty destination within Sweden, Norway, and Finland. We have 230 stores and the e-com channel, who has 30% of our revenue. We are based in Stockholm, the headquarters, and, we’re about 200 at the headquarters and 2,200 people in the in the stores.
We implemented the RELEX Diagnostic in the fall last year, and we immediately saw three focus areas that we have to start working with, and have a clear process and implementation steps. And the first one was system under forecast. We need to have better forecast during high seasons and our campaigns, and we need to do adjustments and have an exception-based way of working every week just to find the brands and the products that is causing the highest lost sales.
JR: I think that RELEX Diagnostics is one of the tools that will provide value for us within the next many years.
It will do our root cause analysis, will do much better with the system doing it instead of manual people doing all the the job around, “Why don’t we have articles, at the right shelf, at the right store, at the right time?”
SV: We spend so many so many hours on in Excel. Excel is fun, but not that fun. So being more efficient and, work with the areas that has a value.
JR: The majority of our, companionship with RELEX has been on the basis that we want to build value. So we both want to, of course, as a business, and Matas and KICKS wants to build value, but we also have a partner in RELEX that helps us and provides, the road for us to go where we want to go. So when we experience issues within our operating model or within our sales, or something like that, we can, always turn to RELEX to get some kind of support, or help, or solve some of the challenges that we have around us.
SV: Our collaboration with RELEX has always been very open. You help us when We are in need to, and we can challenge you in, how to optimize the the system just to – so it fits our business. We have optimized many ways of working and their routines, and we’re always striving to be more efficient, to be the biggest, in the Nordic.
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