Pet Supplies Plus Trims Inventory and Improves Order-Fill Rates With Manhattan Associates

ATLANTA, Oct. 03, 2016 -- People are doting on their pets like never before. To up its competitive advantage in this billion-dollar-a-year industry, Pet Supplies Plus, a leading specialty pet retailer in the United States, transitioned from an all-franchise business model to one with corporate stores and consolidated its distribution centers (DCs) from two sites to one. To enable the DC conversion, Pet Supplies Plus needed a new inventory management system. It chose Inventory Optimization (IO) from Manhattan Associates (NASDAQ:MANH), and following this year’s implementation, Pet Supplies Plus saw a 95 percent in-stock level, a 99 percent plus order-fill rate and then a ten percent reduction of inventory value.

Additionally, Pet Supplies Plus lowered its overall inventory investment while improving customer service. It can now hit its desired in-stock levels and achieve inventory turns in the most profitable way, overcoming complex retail, wholesale and omni-channel inventory management challenges. Before the Manhattan implementation, Pet Supplies Plus replenished its inventories manually from a network of wholesalers. Standardizing and automating DC replenishment was a key part of the program’s success.

“The forecasting and replenishment challenges faced included merchandise categories that had fast and slow-moving items, promotions, perishables and import considerations,” said Scott Fenwick, senior director, Manhattan Associates. “The nature of the company’s business presents a high degree of inventory complexity that had to be optimized in order to achieve the maximum return on investment.

Pet Supplies Plus also relies on Manhattan’s leading Warehouse Management for Open Systems (WMOS), Labor Management (LM), Slotting Optimization and Supply Chain Intelligence (SCI) to run its supply chain. “We had four main goals in deploying Manhattan’s solutions: simplify business processes, reduce inventory investment, improve order accuracy and increase labor productivity,” said Jeff Suttle, senior vice president, supply chain, Pet Supplies Plus. “The features and functions of Manhattan’s solutions are very robust and flexible. We’ve already seen big value from this investment.”

The Pet Supplies Plus case study is currently available for download on Manhattan’s website. Additionally, resources exploring multi-echelon inventory strategies and how to avoid the hidden costs associated with retail promotions are also available on the site.

About Pet Supplies Plus
Pet Supplies Plus is focused on making it easier to get better products for your pet. With more than 350+ locations in 25 states, the stores have a streamlined design, making it easy to navigate a wide assortment of natural foods, hard goods and pet services. Headquartered in Livonia, Mich., Pet Supplies Plus is ranked in Entrepreneur magazine’s 35^th Annual Franchise 500® list as the Top Full-Service Pet Supplies Franchise for its exceptional performance in areas including financial strength and stability, growth rate and system size. For more information about Pet Supplies Plus’ franchising opportunities, visit www.petsuppliesplus.com/franchise, or contact Steve Olson, director of franchise sales, at 734-793-6532.

About Manhattan Associates
Manhattan Associates makes commerce-ready supply chains that bring all points of commerce together so you’re ready to sell and ready to execute. Across the store, through your network or from your fulfillment center, we design, build and deliver market-leading solutions that support both top-line growth and bottom-line profitability. By converging front-end sales with back-end supply chain execution, our software, platform technology and unmatched experience help our customers get commerce ready—and equipped to reap the rewards of the omni-channel marketplace. For more information, please visit www.manh.com.

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Press Contact: Amber Freeman
Manhattan Associates            
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