A Shoe Retailer Gets into Shap with Technology

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Business Name:	Brooks Sports Inc.
Location:	Company headquarters is located in Seattle, Washington, United States, with three outlet stores.
Operation:	Brooks designs and creates top-of-the-line running shoes, apparel, and accessories.
Chief Operating Officer:	David Bohan
Number of Employees:	160
Gross Annual Sales:	$130 million US

The Bottom Line

Microsoft Dynamics RMS has allowed Brooks to establish a reliable, efficient means of overseeing the operations at its remote outlet locations.

 The Problem: Limited Inventory Information Across Stores

For a company known throughout the world for high-performance running shoes and gear, Brooks was caught in a technical backwater a few years ago. For one thing, managing inventory at Brooks' three outlet stores from the company's Seattle headquarters was nearly impossible.

"We couldn't see inventory levels at the individual outlets with the system we were using," Chief Operating Officer David Bohan says.

With limited inventory information, the company was forced to work with universal inventory orders—that is, sending out the same products in the same quantity to all the stores—rather than being able to adjust them to local markets.

Moreover, price changes were slow and grossly inefficient. As Bohan recalls, "We literally had to send a 3-by-5 diskette via an overnight messenger service from one store to the next to change prices." 
 
The Solution: A Smooth Transition to the Right Software

Brooks shifted over to Microsoft Dynamics Retail Management System (RMS) (formerly Microsoft Retail Management System) in mid-2002. The changeover was smooth and met with great enthusiasm by Brooks' employees: "There was a real eagerness to learn everything the system could do, so the training went very well," Bohan recalled.

 The Benefits: Tighter Control Helps Increase Sales

1. Better inventory control. Brooks' employees are now able to obtain up-to-date, accurate inventory information from all three outlet stores. "We're so much better positioned to optimize our products at all three outlet stores." Bohan says.
    
2. Ordering problems eliminated. A critical element to growing sales has been ability with Microsoft Dynamics RMS to pinpoint what is selling well at a particular store and, in turn, stock merchandise accordingly. That has meant an end to universal ordering—in which all three stores received identical inventory shipments, regardless of whether an item was selling or attracting dust on the shelves.
   
   "We can tell, for instance, that shorts are selling in Phoenix when they're not selling as well in Seattle," says Bohan. "We're now able to tailor our orders so we can take advantage of local market conditions."
    
3. Smoother price adjusting. Gone are the days when a diskette would make the rounds from one store to the next to provide updated pricing information. Now, with Microsoft Dynamics RMS, price changes can be overseen quickly from Brooks' Seattle headquarters.
   
   This is a significant time saver, says Bohan, adding, "We save at least three man-days a month from this part of the system alone."
    
4. Better in-store reconciliation. Another problem Brooks' managers faced was reconciling what was actually being sold with what was being reported back to company headquarters. With Microsoft Dynamics RMS overseeing universal and accurate price changes, the system smoothly matches what's moving off the shelves with sales reports arriving in Seattle.
   
   "The system just really does a nice job of tracking what's happening at the store level," says Bohan.
    
5. Smoother store shutdown. Given smoother reconciliation procedures, Bohan says Microsoft Dynamics RMS saves outlet store staff a significant amount of time at the end of each business day: "We're now able to shut down the stores at night more efficiently. That's also saved us a lot of time."
    
6. A boon to employee morale. Outlet sales staff no longer has to wrestle with time-draining price reconciliation issues. "It's really eased some tension between certain [employee] groups and enabled us to work better as a team. Now, the work between accounting and the outlet stores is as seamless as it is between other departments," says Bohan.