Cost Plus and RELEX Partner to Automate and Optimize Supply Chain Planning

Cost Plus World Market, a national specialty retailer of home products sourced from around the world, will partner with RELEX Solutions, provider of unified retail planning solutions, to transform their supply chain processes. RELEX will provide a demand forecasting, replenishment, and allocation solution to support the retailer’s 243 stores throughout the United States, as well as their growing ecommerce channel. 

In replacing a legacy in-house system, Cost Plus gains supply chain automation and optimization to more effectively meet the challenges of today’s continuously evolving market conditions. The RELEX solution will introduce exception-based management, reducing manual planning while driving improvements to forecast accuracy. The solution will also help Cost Plus account for many of the nuanced challenges specific to the specialty retailer’s business, including the management of break-to-sell, seasonal, and slow-moving products. 

“RELEX will allow replacement of Cost Plus World Market’s legacy system to forecast, allocate, and replenish goods throughout our wide, complex range of categories, from furniture and home furnishings to food and beverage products,” said Lou Mercado, SVP of Supply Chain at Cost Plus World Market. “With RELEX, we will be able to manage a variety of lead times for our unique mix of products sourced and designed globally, while also ensuring our specialty food products are allocated with a ‘first expiring-first out’ logic that ensures high quality goods for our customers.”

“We’re delighted to welcome Cost Plus World Market to the RELEX team,” said RELEX’s VP, Western Region Susan Boyme. “We love Cost Plus’s mission of making premium artisan goods available at affordable prices, and we’re excited to start driving value for their organization so they can pass that value on to their customers. We look forward to working toward their goals of improved forecast accuracy and inventory optimization to ensure they can deliver the high service levels their shoppers deserve.”