Bruder Toys America, Inc.

Buried Under Truckloads of Inventory

As the North American distributor for Bruder Spielwaren, an 86 Year-old manufacturer of high-quality toys located in Fürth, Germany, Bruder Toys America strives to maintain a high level of customer satisfaction while keeping inventory costs as low as possible. With two distribution centers in the United States, Bruder’s objective is to stock their inventory as close as possible to their customers.

Like many businesses, Bruder planned inventory with many complicated spreadsheets and intuition. Achieving balance with an inventory of hu dreds of items across two locations was a significant challenge.

According to Beate Caso, President, “We are in the toy business and most of our business occurs in the last four months of the year, so it could be very slow during the summer months then demand suddenly picks up prior to the Holiday Season. If we don’t have enough i ventory to fulfill all the orders just when needed we will lose customers and our high standards for customer service.

Better Visibility to Stock Leads to Reductions

Glennis Spieker, Sales Director, at Sapphire Systems, Inc., knew Valogix was a good fit for Bruder’s business goals.

Glennis explains, Accurately planning for hundreds of seasonal items across two distribution centers becomes extremely difficult because of the sheer volume of information needed to make good decisions. Providing Bruder with an alternative to their time-consuming spreadsheets was the only way to enable them to meet their business objectives.

Information on spreadsheets is static so it becomes out of date very quickly, said Glennis. Bruder needed a solution that would very easily and accurately manage all of their items at each distribution center. Valogix gives them info mation they need at a click of a button so they can make strategic decisions and use the cash they would have spent on inventory to invest in other areas of the business.

Within a few months after implementing Valogix Inventory Planer, Beate noticed big improvements in the stock mix and the time it took to do planning. Valogix Inventory Planner is extremely user friendly. It synchronizes data every night so you are working with updated information every day.

Big Upfront and Long-Term Benefits

It was only a matter of months before Bruder Toys started to see results.

In a very short time we were able to reduce overstocks and excess inventory by more than 10%, and planning time has been reduced by 90% says Beate. Freeing up valuable time allows us to work on other important areas of the business.

Bruder Toys is now benefiting from increased visibility of their stock, they know instantly where stock is and what stock is needed without lengthy computations and checks.

According to Beate The enhanced MRP planning has been very important to us. To prevent over and under stocking for each warehouse, Valogix Planner gives us automatic forecasting based on order history and seasonal fluctuations – which is a big aspect of our business.