Thirty-One Gifts chooses TXT Integrated Retail Planning solution

Thirty-One Gifts, one of America's largest direct-selling companies, has announced the successful go-live of the TXT Integrated Retail Planning solution. The TXT MAPLE LAKE software is helping Thirty-One Gifts manage the whole spectrum of in-season planning processes including inventory management and open-to-buy.

Thirty-One Gifts offers products that work with everyone's lifestyle - from stylish and functional purses and totes to home organization solutions - most of which can be personalized. The company is headquartered in Columbus, Ohio, with more than 1,300 employees and nearly 119,000 independent sales consultants in the U.S. and Ontario.

"Because of our business model which relies strongly on sales consultants' activity and is very much driven by end-of-month sales, managing inventory and SKUs is absolutely critical to us, particularly as we transition seasons," explains Mike Mausteller, director of planning and merchandise control at Thirty-One Gifts. "We needed to better align our inventory strategies with demand to avoid backorders and additional air freight charges. The TXT Integrated Retail Planning solution is helping us achieve ideal inventory management and optimized product availability."

Prior to TXT's implementation, Thirty-One Gifts relied on spreadsheets with planning executed at month and style level. Now with support from the TXT Integrated Retail Planning software, users plan at a finer style/color/size level and with a weekly horizon. The solution also provides embedded performance management and dashboards which ensure greater transparency across the business, and ultimately support more accurate fact-based decisions.

"The full planning team is using TXT and they really like the system. The solution has helped standardize the process, with everyone working and thinking in a coordinated fashion," added Mausteller. "We chose TXT for their ability to support retail planning from end-to-end, as well as for the flexibility of the solution which is able to adapt to our growing business. Adoption among users has proven extremely smooth."

Peter Charness, chief marketing officer at TXT comments: "Thirty-One Gifts has a unique business model with a consultant-driven direct sales channel. We are pleased that our platform-based TXT Integrated Retail Planning product, as implemented by our consulting team, provided such a good fit to their specific business methodology. As we continue to invest and grow our North American base of operations we look forward to applying our retail planning capabilities to supporting the unique needs of companies like Thirty-One Gifts. "