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Guitar Center is seeking greater inventory visibility and management to improve its store replenishment planning processes by minimizing stockouts and overstock, per a May 12 press release.
The retailer will use specific modules in Relex Solution’s forecasting and replenishment product ahead of this holiday season to manage distribution centers to store purchase order and inventory allocations, Matt Tull, vice president of merchandising and inventory management support at Guitar Center, told sister publication Supply Chain Dive.
Some of the technology tools Guitar Center has previously used were rigid in design, making it difficult for the retailer to adapt or add metrics to assist with decision-making, Tull said. The inflexibility proved especially challenging in the face of macro-economic events like the COVID-19 pandemic and recent tariff hikes, he added.
Guitar Center aims to launch the project prior to the holiday season, Tull said. While the retailer did have the option to roll out the software in phases, Guitar Center decided against it as a phased approach would require a significant amount of integration and code changes.
“More than likely, we’ll take a crawl, walk, run approach, starting with low-impact areas when we go live and gradually ramp up to more significant categories as we evaluate the deployment and expand it out to include additional categories,” Tull said. “The intent is to ramp up within hours or a few days to be fully live.”
Guitar Center has more than 300 retail locations and operates four enterprise distribution centers located in California, Missouri, Indiana and Maryland, in addition to a supporting network of hubs across the U.S., according to the company’s website.
Other companies have also tapped Relex products to help unify and optimize supply chain operations. Last year, convenience store chain Wesco integrated technology from the service provider to help automate its supply chain and retail planning processes. Meanwhile, United Natural Foods partnered with Relex to improve its demand planning and procurement operations.