customers want, while companies may find it necessary to expedite some product shipments to meet demand in different locations. “It is a lot harder to be efficient when you don’t understand exactly what you’re going to sell in the next month,” Kmetz adds. Arkieva provides supply chain planning solutions, including end-to-end supply chain software, as well as solutions for demand forecasting and inventory and supply planning. Its solutions are meant to work with companies’ ERP systems to help drive forecasting and supply chain practices; most ERP systems would have difficulty doing this at scale, Kmetz says. The company’s solutions work across most verticals. Currently, Lush uses several Arkieva solutions, including its Demand Planner, Inventory Planner, Executive Reporting, and Financial Planner solutions. “We needed software that could handle a detailed level of forecasting,” Gregory says. The Arkieva solution calculates a safety stock quantity for each product in each store, he adds. Each week, Arkieva generates demand forecasts for all Lush products at each of its stores—an enormous number of potential product and location pairings. Lush then exports the forecasts and plans to its ERP system to provide each store with inventory suggestions that account for the store’s lead
As a result, Lush stores and its website can feature about 1,000 SKUs at any time. “One main challenge we faced was enabling the store managers to have control of their inventory, but also making sure that the products are at the right place at the right time,” Gregory says. What’s more, Lush North America distributes all products from its two distribution centers in Canada. Stores located in the southern United States can be thousands of miles away, resulting in long lead times. DITCH THE SPREADSHEETS Given these challenges, as well as the growth Lush was experiencing, the company needed a flexible, efficient, and collaborative demand planning tool. The manual spreadsheets that Lush had been using often made it difficult to maintain data integrity throughout the planning process, and to streamline the process itself. In addition, the job of updating increasingly large files had grown cumbersome and complex. As many businesses grow, continuing to rely on spreadsheets can make it difficult to accurately capture demand and generate a reliable, useful forecast, says John Kmetz, customer success manager with Arkieva. Less-than-accurate demand forecasts can lead to both lost sales and higher expenses. Stores may lack the products
CASEBOOK STUDY Lusher Forecasting THE CHALLENGE Lush’s largely manual demand and inventory planning processes were cumbersome and inefficient, and they often failed to provide the information Lush management needed to ensure it had the right inventory in the right place.
THE SOLUTION Implement several planning solutions from Arkieva.
THE RESULTS A forecasting process that is both more streamlined and able to provide more accurate information for demand planning. NEXT STEPS While no firm plans are in place yet, Lush is potentially interested in exploring Arkieva’s supply planning functionality, as well as expanding the use of Arkieva to Lush operations outside North America.
Lush stands out in the beauty market with sustainably made products crafted from natural ingredients. In 2024, Lush sold more than 21 million of its famous bath bombs, as well as a range of bubble bars, lotions, hair care, makeup, and other beauty products.
174 Inbound Logistics • January 2026
Powered by FlippingBook