Optimize your Sales Forecasts with AI: Flip Design Unveils its Secrets!

Given Flip Design's strong growth over the past 15 years, specific inventory management challenges have emerged. The company has two primary sales periods annually but prefers to go into production once a year. As a result, accurately predicting sales becomes crucial to estimate the required quantity of each clothing item to be produced. This helps to meet the demand and minimize the need for occasional production runs.

Estimating the manufacturing needs of the company is a challenging task, not only because of the required accuracy but also due to the vast variety of items they offer. Indeed, in addition to the impressive range of uniform pieces, each item comes in 12 different sizes and several colours. Manufacturing forecasts must, therefore, be carried out individually for each piece. Doing this by hand is time-consuming, inefficient, and laborious.

Flip Design asked Vooban to implement artificial intelligence in its sales forecasting and production planning processes. The objective was to obtain precise information to optimize their activities and inventory management.

Vooban didn't stop there. A second system designed exclusively for Flip Design has also been created: an inventory optimization tool.

When it comes to predicting sales, there is always a degree of uncertainty involved, which can result in a potential margin of error. Therefore, the company must decide whether to produce more or less clothes than they plan to sell. On one hand, they might end up with excess stock, leading to storage issues and potential losses. On the other hand, they might not have enough of the right products at the right time to fulfill specific orders quickly. Based on the forecasts and margin of error, our inventory optimization tool can suggest the ideal quantity to produce, considering storage and opportunity costs as well.

Implementing the sales prediction tool has led to considerable savings for Flip Design. It has helped to reduce the number of occasional production runs and increased the company's ability to supply items more efficiently. As a result, Flip Design has maintained customer satisfaction and built a strong reputation in the school sector.

The algorithms for sales prediction and inventory management work within a 12-month time frame. This allows for larger production runs, reducing the need for occasional batches. These are costly regarding resources, time, and money but are often necessary when the requested goods are sold out.

This tool also allows rapid growth without taking too many risks, enabling Flip Design to break into new markets in the rest of Canada and the Northeastern United States.