How Edgewell Drove $4M in New Sales and Made Smarter Inventory Decisions with Alloy.ai
Edgewell Personal Care, a multinational consumer goods brand, manages a diverse portfolio of 25 popular brands, including Schick, Playtex, Hawaiian Tropic, and Billie. Managing inventory and sales across such a wide array of products presents complex challenges, particularly in seasonal categories like sun care.
According to Alison Jones from Edgewell, VP of Operations at Edgewell, the company wanted to avoid excess inventory in some locations and phantom inventory in others.
Alison Jones
VP of Operations at Billie (Edgewell)
Overcoming Inventory Management Challenges
Before Alloy.ai, Edgewell faced the kinds of sales and inventory management challenges that often impact consumer brands — problems that can be solved with the right data. For example:
- Excess Retail Inventory: Excess stock of Hawaiian Tropic at the end of the season led to costly returns.
- Phantom Inventory: Discrepancies in inventory records at major retailers hindered replenishment efforts.
- Real-Time Retail POS Reporting: Edgewell needed real-time insights to respond quickly to shifts in demand and avoid costly penalties such as On Time and In Full (OTIF) fees.
Additionally, managing these challenges involved manual, time-consuming processes using Excel spreadsheets, limiting the ability to make decisions quickly.
How Alloy.ai Was a 'Game-Changer' for Edgewell
Alloy.ai, a platform purpose-built for consumer goods brands, integrates and normalizes real-time data from retailers, distributors, and internal systems. With Alloy.ai, brands gain actionable insights to manage their inventory effectively and drive sales growth.
For Edgewell, Alloy.ai quickly provided:
- Real-Time Inventory Insights: Alloy.ai enabled Edgewell to identify precise inventory needs across their retailers’ networks and their own. For instance, during a recent sun care season, Alloy.ai’s insights helped recommend the addition of 300,000 units of inventory at specific locations, preventing stockouts and avoiding end-of-season returns.
- Phantom Inventory Resolution: By pinpointing discrepancies in their retailers’ inventory data, Edgewell corrected phantom inventory issues at a major retailer ensuring proper replenishment.
- Faster Response Time: The platform made data accessible and actionable, allowing Edgewell to address issues quickly. Alison Jones shared an example of identifying and resolving a product availability issue in a store within 30 seconds by using Alloy.ai.
Alloy.ai’s flexibility in generating sales and inventory reports tailored to different stakeholders (e.g., supply chain leads, sales executives) further streamlined decision-making across teams.
Driving $4M in New Sales and Creating a More Efficient Supply Chain
Since implementing Alloy.ai, Edgewell has achieved remarkable outcomes:
- $4 Million in Incremental Sales: By using Alloy.ai’s insights to send the right inventory to the right locations, Edgewell added $4 million in new sales, particularly in high-demand areas.
- Improved Inventory Placement: Alloy.ai helped Edgewell optimize inventory allocation, avoiding overstock and costly returns in seasonal categories like sun care.
- Enhanced Operational Efficiency: The time to resolve issues dramatically decreased. For example, a product availability check that historically required complex data pulls was resolved in seconds.
- Better Retailer Relationships: With Alloy.ai, Edgewell could have data-driven conversations with retailers to secure OTIF exemptions when demand exceeded expectations, further strengthening partnerships.
Alison Jones summed it up by calling Alloy.ai a “game changer,” noting how Alloy.ai “puts data into the language of the person you’re speaking to,” empowering her team to make smarter, customer-focused decisions across the supply chain. “This is the thing I didn’t know I needed,” she said.