Natsu Foods has chosen Aiperia’s AI-based optimisation solution to supply retailers even more tailored to shoppers’ demand with healthy sushi and convenience items from its own production. The Neuss-based company supplies over 1,200 stores – including retail outlets of the Rewe and Edeka groups – in direct store deliveries on a consignment basis. Natsu Foods takes care of shelf management for the retailers and bears the full commercial risk remaining the owner of the goods until they are sold.
Both optimising the product range and forecasting sales of the short-life sushi and convenience products pose a particular challenge, as retail customers’ purchasing decisions for these products are often impulse-driven and fluctuate greatly due to external factors such as the weather and calendar effects.
Natsu opted for Aiperia after extensive testing in a region of Germany in the first quarter of this year. The sushi and convenience specialists compared their actual sales with the planning data from the previous process and the AI-based suggestions from Aiperia. The test has shown that with Aiperia’s optimisation, Natsu delivers significantly more accurate quantities than with its previous planning. And this without a higher number of returns, solely through more accurate planning of product range and quantities.
Aiperia accounts for substitution effects in the Natsu range
Aiperia replaces Natsu’s proprietary SQL-based planning solution, which did not offer the company enough flexibility and required numerous manual interventions. The tool also does not calculate margins but merely helps to optimise quantities. However, the Neuss-based sushi specialists also have experience with standard optimisation solutions. They had used software from Blue Yonder in the past.
Jan Meier, Managing Director of the Natsu Group, sees a particular advantage of the Aiperia solution in the fact that the innovative AI tool can not only reliably forecast sales quantities per item, but also takes substitution effects in the Natsu range into account and helps to optimise the range for each individual store. “With planning that takes substitution effects in our range into account, we can significantly improve product availability without increasing the number of returns,” explains Jan Meier. He also chose Aiperia because of the way the AI solution takes external factors such as weather and store location into account in its forecasts.
Aiperia always optimises its customers’ profits
Jan Meier also wants to use Aiperia to implement more frequent changes in the assortment selection for each store. “Our business needs change because it is heavily dependent on impulses,” he explains. He is very satisfied with the collaboration with the Aiperia team: “We set up the test really quickly together and were able to complete it on schedule with meaningful insights. The communication with the Aiperia team is very efficient.”
Unlike other planning solutions, Aiperia always optimises its customers’ profits – it takes the cost of goods into account when planning and does not focus solely on turnover or on avoiding shelf gaps at all costs. This is particularly important given the short shelf life of sushi and convenience products. It is not without reason that Aiperia, founded in 2021, has already earned an excellent reputation in the bakery industry with its AI-based optimisation of delivery quantities.
Natsu will plan in a largely automated manner in the future
With Aiperia, Natsu will now not only optimise its planning, but also gradually automate it. This is also because it is becoming increasingly difficult to find suitable personnel. Until now, the planning process at the ultra-fresh specialist has been very complex and characterised by numerous manual interventions. For example, deviations in shelf space in individual stores are currently not taken into account by the planning tool and must be manually reworked. With Aiperia, Natsu aims to plan its product range and quantities for each store in a largely automated manner in the future.
Not least, the AI solution will relieve Natsu’s management team of planning tasks, enabling them to focus even more on further developing the product ranges. Jan Meier is confident that this will be a success – not least because the Aiperia solution is set to create a high degree of transparency across all key figures for his business.
Aiperia’s solution is ideal for optimising fresh product ranges
“We are particularly pleased with Natsu’s decision, as it shows that our solution, with which we have enjoyed considerable success in the bakery industry, is also perfectly suited to optimising other fresh and ultra-fresh product ranges,” says Franz Seubert, CEO of Aiperia: “We understand how to optimise businesses with complex product ranges, where planning is characterised by a high degree of uncertainty and impulse purchases.”
