AI-powered supply chain and retail planning to successfully navigate uncertainty

Evo: An In-Depth Look

Design the right assortment for the right store at the right time. Learn how Evo's groundbreaking responsive AI makes the partnership between humans and machines successful, productive, and profitable. Evo makes it simple to distill insights from vast amounts of information and inputs, processing data instantly and making optimal recommendations.

Boggi Milano Increases Sales While Reducing Inventory

Boggi Milano started as a small boutique in 1939 to become the fastest growing of premium Italian menswear fashion all over the world.  Paolo Selva, CEO, Boggi Milano: Passion, style, innovation, and quality – these are the pillars of the success of Boggi Milano. We currently have a network of about 200 stores. We operate in 30 countries. Nowadays, customers expect responsiveness, deep understanding of their personal needs, and consistently excellent service – all of which stress the traditional capability boundaries of supply chain systems. Paolo Selva: One of the secrets about success has been always listening to the peculiarities of every single and each market. Fashion is not just about design. Strategic management of the supply chain is how fashion makes or loses money. The backbone of fashion. And artificial intelligence is the next generation of technology to deliver quality and consistency in the supply chain. Fabrizio Fantini, ToolsGroup VP of Product Strategy: Boggi Milano had developed their supply chain system for well over 20 years in house, but this was not anymore fit for their rapid international growth. Boggi needed a system to adapt to changes in local demand, to predict sales, to customize their offering around the world. In short, they needed a smart supply chain system that could rebalance inventory availability in real time. The automated demand forecast of Evo Pricing uses unique assets, such as proprietary data from more than 1 billion people in the world, as well as observations of over 100 billion dollars of sales every year. Expert systems and algorithms use this data to allocate the right products to the right stores at the right time, reducing wasted overstock and freeing up faster-selling inventory, while reducing complexity in the supply chain. Building on the Microsoft stack with Azure, SQL Server, and Excel to meet and anticipate customer demand.  Fabrizio Fantini: Evo pricing builds autonomous systems that create value. Specifically, our supply chain solution can predict the demand of nearly any product and service so that we are able to optimize the right volume at the right place at the right time, every single day. And we built it on top of the Microsoft infrastructure that users are already familiar with, so it's easy to use. What we do for Boggi specifically is to help them predict how many pieces they will sell every day, for every store, for every size – so at a very, very granular level. And then based on that, we allow them to diversify their offering more, and therefore, have greater inventory efficiency. Essentially, selling more, but with less inventory overall,  based on the intuition that every store only needs a more fraction of the overall product range based on its local seasonal demand. The replenishment solution of Evo Pricing mapped out the potential sales of each location and recommended delivering higher-demand articles from the warehouse to the right stores in the right sizes.  Also, items not selling well in one location could be transferred to another store, transforming dead inventory that risked being wasted into truly profitable sales.  Fabrizio Fantini: Evo Pricing helped Boggi Milano – in just seven weeks increase – its like-for-like sales by 4%, even while reducing inventory level by 12%. Therefore, we increased the inventory efficiency of Boggi Milano. And actually, stores-to-store transfers were even more impactful, increasing sell-through by an order of magnitude (a whole order of magnitude meaning more than ten times improvement when you move something across different stores). For Boggi Milano, less really ended up being more, solving the traditional conflict between reducing inventory and increasing sales. The Microsoft powered solution of Evo Pricing fulfilled both goals at once. Within just seven weeks, it simplified inventory management, reduced over stock and fragmentation, and eased warehousing and storage issues – all while increasing full-price sell-through and revenues. Now Boggi has a faster more, agile supply chain, enabling better delivery to customer demand every day around the world. Paolo Selva: We always put a lot of focus on innovation and technology. That's reason why we have partnered up with Evo that has put AI at the core of its business.

Meet Evo Responsive AI

WIth Evo, companies can identify and implement optimal prices across their portfolios and networks. Evo builds a map of existing data such as sales, costs, customers, weather, and competitors to product recommend the optimal pricing recommendations. Using the test-and-learn approach, Evo increases forecasting accuracy and rapidly adjusting to marketplace conditions, so organizations can satisfy customers while increase inventory efficiency and profitability.

Event Network Masters Pricing Strategy for Better Business Performance

Step into the visionary journey of Event Network, the trailblazer in cultural attraction retail, where innovation meets profit maximization through data-driven price optimization. In 1998, founders Larry Gilbert and Helen embarked on a retail odyssey, starting with a single store at the Titanic Artifact Exhibition. What began as a modest venture evolved into Event Network, now an industry titan in cultural attraction retail. The heart of Event Network's mission is to elevate retail potential at experiential attractions. Recognizing the critical role of pricing, the transition from a cost-plus approach became imperative. Enter Evo, the catalyst for transformation. In the crucible of crisis, Evo emerged as a steadfast partner, amplifying the good and guiding Event Network through a reimagination of inventory and store collections. Fabrizio Fantini, Evo's CEO, showcased an extraordinary capacity to understand Event Network's uniqueness, integrating it seamlessly into Evo's scientific approach. The true differentiator lies in Evo's commitment — a high-touch dedication to doing what is necessary and right for the business. Fabrizio's personalized attention and Evo's ownership mentality redefine partnership. Event Network's CEO, Larry Gilbert, attests to Evo's unparalleled flexibility, creativity, and positive problem-solving approach applicable beyond retail. Evo's impact extends to any business willing to embrace a transformative journey. In Larry's words, Evo is not just a recommendation; it's an endorsement without reservation. Event Network's success story is an open invitation for businesses to join hands with Evo, where excellence isn't just promised; it's delivered, exceeding expectations at every turn.

Get to Know Evo Better

Retail success means giving your customers a high quality personalized experience from start to finish. Evo empowers you to deliver that every day with a simple software everyone on your team can use. Get the right products to the right stores at the right time where they sell to your ideal customer. Sharpen your competitive edge with Evo's responsive AI, which meets the needs of your specific customers by learning from a wealth of data and information globallyglobal data so that no matter how diverse your products and networks, you can monitor market behaviors in real time, ang guarantee product availablity while boosting your profit margin and reducing waste.

Customers and Analysts Recognize ToolsGroup as a Supply Chain and Retail Planning Leader

Check out some of our most recent accolades and discover why so many companies turn to ToolsGroup for better, faster supply chain decision making. ToolsGroup Named the Technology Leader in SPARK Matrix for Retail Forecasting and Replenishment NOVEMBER 2023 – The Quadrant Knowledge Solutions SPARK Matrix™: Retail Forecasting & Replenishment (RF&R), Q4, 2023 includes a […]

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Dynamic Fulfillment 101: Achieving Multiple Objectives for Better Margins

This is part three of our blog series, “Dynamic Fulfillment 101.” Missed the first two posts? Click here for part one and here for part two.   Last week, we talked about the three components of cost-based fulfillment optimization – ship cost, labor cost, and expected revenue. This week, we’re going to explain how Dynamic […]

Abercrombie & Fitch Co. Shares the Top Three Keys to Successful Change Management

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Dynamic Fulfillment 101: The Cost-Based Approach and The Three Keys to Optimizing Your Total Cost-to-Serve

This is part two of our blog series, “Dynamic Fulfillment 101.” Haven’t read part one? Click here!   Welcome back to Dynamic Fulfillment 101!  Last week, we reviewed the challenges facing the retail industry and standard tech stacks in regard to expanding networks and the increasing fulfillment complexity – from proliferating fulfillment centers and rapidly […]