Mothercare

What we needed was an extremely robust and flexible system, and the advice and support of an experienced supplier who truly understood our business. We found such a solution and partner in Torex.
Knowing the company

Jas Virdee, Mothercare

The iconic Mothercare Group is synonymous with parenting. As well as its retail brands, Mothercare and Early Learning Centre (ELC), the company has established a popular social networking site, Gurgle. com, which offers useful advice to new parents. Combined, Mothercare and ELC have 405 UK retail outlets as well as their respective web stores and mail order operations. The Group has also achieved phenomenal international success, expanding into 51 countries through 609 franchises or joint ventures. The Groups success has been underpinned by a consistent reputation for specialism, local knowledge, quality, value and availability across its multi-channel, multi-national and multi-cultural shopping structure.
Defining the strategy

While the UKs operations bucked the recession in FY09 to post a healthy 6.9% sales increase, its international sales grew a phenomenal 40.9% in the same period, with 115 new stores joining the Group. By the end of FY10, Mothercare plans to open a further 100 international stores. Mothercare recognised that such multi-national, multi-channel growth would be impossible to manage with its aging legacy systems and increasingly unwieldy spreadsheets.
Choosing the solution

Sustaining this reputation through future expansion will be essential to the Groups continued profitability and ability to attract new partners as well as customers a challenge that has significantly intensified with the companys recent overseas activities.

In particular, the Group identified the urgent need for an extensive, flexible sourcing capacity planning solution, supported by direct supply chains, which would optimise merchandise availability. This needed to support the various territorial and channel demands while enabling head office to tightly control distribution costs and limit wastage. After thoroughly examining its options, the Group elected to install Torex Merchandise Planning. ELC UK already used the previous version of this system and Mothercare had been impressed with its functionality.

www.torex.com

Mothercare

Mothercare
Snapshot
Industry Retail Product Torex Merchandise Planning

The Torex solutions Pre Season Planning module was introduced first to Mothercares UK operation and two franchise partners. In the next phase Mothercare is rolling out the solution to all its international franchise partners. After that, the company plans to roll out further Torex modules for: In Season Planning, WSSI and Assortment Planning, before upgrading ELC onto the same platform to gain further crossoperational efficiencies.

Achieving results now

Once fully rolled out, the Torex solution will mark a vast improvement in capacity planning for the UK based Sourcing team. By removing the reliance on spreadsheets and knowledge in peoples heads, the system will make the whole process far more efficient and consistent, reducing administrative headaches and enabling improved responsiveness to market conditions. With the Torex solution, Mothercare will be able to draw on historical trading data, and automatically accommodate known local and seasonal variations to more accurately forecast how much of each product it will need at each of its outlets.

Jas Virdee, Mothercare, said, Our reputation and expansion plans depend on our ability to place the quality of products that our customers expect in the right country and right channel to suit their demands. While doing this, we also need to tightly This means it will be able to reliably satisfy its control our sourcing costs so that we can continue customers expectation of having the right to offer our customers best value. Achieving this on product in the right place at the best price, while a multi-national, multi-channel limiting wastage. scale is only possible with an The consistency, Jas Virdee concluded, The extremely robust and flexible accuracy and consistency, accuracy and system that has been designed efficiency weve efficiency weve already achieved to support the many, varying already achieved with Torex has given us the business demands that our multiconfidence to continue with our with Torex has given faceted retail operation faces. We very ambitious expansion plans. also needed the advice and support us the confidence of an experienced supplier who understood our business. Our initial phases confirm that weve found such a solution and partner in Torex.

to continue with our very ambitious expansion plans.

Jas Virdee To learn more about Torex, please visit www.torex.com.

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Torex Retail Holdings Limited 2011. All rights reserved. Torex and other Torex trademarked names or brands are trademarks or registered trademarks of Torex Retail Holdings Limited and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. All other trademarks mentioned herein are recognised as trademarks of their respective owners.

About Torex Torex is a European market leader for store systems in Retail, Hospitality, Convenience and Fuel markets. We provide outlet and head office technology to our core markets globally, through a mix of software, hardware, consultancy, implementation and maintenance and services. Our technology ranges from Point-of-Sale to solutions which help our customers deal with merchandise planning, business analytics, loss prevention and multi-channel trading. 1,150 Torex people help over 6,000 businesses serve their customers every year, in over 30 countries.

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