KappAhl is a leading Nordic fashion chain with about 270 stores in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Poland. The company's mission statement is to offer value-for-money fashion with a wide appeal, while becoming the leading and most profitable fashion chain in the Nordic countries.

To help to improve sales at its stores while maintaining margins, KappAhl sought to optimize the precision of its merchandise allocations. With 12,000 unique style/colour combinations per season and about 3800 allocations performed each night, its two home grown systems were no longer meeting KappAhl’s requirements. The retailer licensed JDA Allocation powered by Arthur for its flexibility and best-of-breed capabilities.

“Our former systems were automated, but didn’t let us work at the level of detail required to achieve our goals,” said Therese Jagenburg, KappAhl’s director of merchandise management. “Since implementing JDA Allocation we have optimized our allocations with 20% better precision and improved size compliance with local demands.”

With the goal of increasing gross profit by targeting allocations to specific location needs, KappAhl assembled a project team of 10 people. The team’s plan was to integrate various elements into its allocation approach to support both initial allocation and the store replenishment processes in the four countries that KappAhl operates. The team gained a solid understanding of what business benefits the JDA Allocation software was able to deliver thanks to a conference room pilot and reference visits with other JDA customers.

The KappAhl team found that all of the time they spent gathering knowledge and securing the right resources was well worth their efforts. The entire implementation took about 12 months, which included 2 months of testing. After 3 weeks of rolling out the cross-dock flow and another week to roll out capabilities for reserve stock, KappAhl went live with JDA Allocation in October 2006.

“It was a perfect rollout!” said Jagenburg. “Coming in on time and under budget, our JDA Allocation project has been the best and most painless implementation that KappAhl has ever experienced. Everything is running smoothly and we have not had a single style/colour combination go to the wrong store since the system has been live. We extend our thanks to the JDA consultants who helped us throughout.”