neoworks deliver online merchandising system for The Entertainer

The Customer

The Entertainer is a successful multichannel Toy retailer with over 50 high street stores and website, TheToyShop.com. The online side of their business has grown rapidly over the last four years and a key factor in driving that growth is the addition of new online outlets, such as Amazon and EBay.

Our Solution

neoworks have worked together with The Entertainer to build an online merchandising system for their multi-site online business. The system has fully automated integrations into their websites, the Amazon and EBay websites and the order management and warehouse management systems that process and ship the goods to customers. These integrations automate the end-to-end selling process, including product listing, stock availability updates, cross outlet merchandising, marshaling of orders from all outlets through The Entertainer’s order fulfilment systems and providing order status updates back to the outlets.

The merchandising system that sits at the hub of The Entertainer’s online operation provides real time stock and sales information across all online outlets and manages real time allocation of stock to each outlet. Stock allocation is controlled through a combination of automated strategies with manual overrides that enable The Entertainer’s merchandisers to maintain fine control over key product lines. The Entertainer uses the system to optimise their allocation of stock across outlets to achieve maximum profitability for the business.

The automated stock allocation strategies employed are a combination of statistical projections based on historical sales data, minimum target levels for each outlet and per outlet weightings set by the merchandising team. Target levels, weightings and allocations themselves may be overridden on a per product per outlet basis in real time. This fine grained control is used to manage key lines, especially for products with limited stock availability during busy trading periods.

Success

Customer Feedback

"The online merchandising solution we have developed with neoworks gives us the flexibility we need to increase stock availability across channels, increase sales and maximise profitability. In addition it gives us total control over the movement of data between channels, ensuring timely and accurate information is displayed to customers whichever route they shop with us."

Duncan Grant - Director of Multichannel, The Entertainer