Ecommerce Inventory Management: Forecasting Demand

[mandy]

For Cooking.com, which controls inventory for each of its partner sites, where it sells a mix of its own brands and those of its partners, the multi-site strategy has translated into continued robust growth in revenue, which rose 25% last year to $50 million at its flagship site Cooking.com alone.

But additional site operations mean a huge and complicated expansion in the volume of sales it must forecast to ensure it has the right products on hand to produce the highest sell-through rate. And with its products occasionally featured on NBC’s “Today Show,” the national publicity can cause sales of some products to suddenly surge, explains Bryan Handlen, Cooking.com COO.

“We can get a 100% increase in year-over-year sales of some products,” he says. So Cooking.com can use all the help it can get in planning adequate supplies for future sales, he adds...

full article: http://www.internetretailer.com/article.asp?id=23580