Background: Rapid growth of the Turkish beauty and personal care retailer
Gratis is one of Turkey’s largest and fastest-growing beauty and personal care retailers, operating more than 650 stores nationwide. Its expansive portfolio includes cosmetics, skincare, hair care and personal care products, with a strong emphasis on private label and exclusive brands. Promotions are at the core of Gratis’ growth strategy, with over 2,000 SKUs often on promotion across its stores and online at any given time. As a result, inventory planning and execution are critical to maintaining customer satisfaction and protecting revenue.
Challenge: Managing complex inventory and promotions amid rapid expansion
Gratis’ rapid expansion—scaling from 250 to over 650 stores—required a fresh approach to inventory management. With a highly promotional model and complex supply chain involving more than 100 suppliers, the business needed a solution that could dynamically balance availability and efficiency. Their main priorities were reducing lost sales due to out-of-stocks and controlling excess inventory that strained resources. In addition, long lead times (up to 8 months for some products) made forecasting even more challenging. To maintain high service levels and deliver on customer expectations, Gratis needed more reliable, responsive inventory planning.
Solution: Tailored AI-powered forecasting and replenishment
After evaluating several providers, Gratis selected invent.ai for its flexible and adaptive approach to retail inventory optimization. Invent.ai began by listening closely to Gratis’ goals, then tailored its demand forecasting, replenishment and promotion planning capabilities to support them. Hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS), the system is reliable and scalable, built to handle the demands of an expanding retail footprint.
With invent.ai’s platform in place, Gratis automated its inventory management end-to-end—from forecasting demand for promoted and core SKUs to optimizing replenishment at both the store and distribution center level. This collaborative partnership has allowed Gratis to confidently execute its growth strategy while staying focused on customer experience and operational efficiency.
Results: Leaner inventory and automated planning across growing network
With invent.ai’s AI-powered solutions, Gratis has achieved measurable business improvements, including:
- Boosted revenue: Capturing a 5% increase in sales by reducing lost sales caused by stockouts
- Optimized inventory levels: Significantly reduced days of supply, resulting in leaner, more efficient inventory
- Automated operations: Fully automated inventory planning across all stores and distribution centers
- Strengthened promotion planning: Improved the accuracy and effectiveness of promotional campaigns
- Enhanced visibility and precision: Gained clearer demand insights by SKU, location, day and channel
- Enabled seamless scaling: Scaled from 250 to 650+ stores without disruption to inventory or service
- Improved supply chain efficiency: Effectively managed 10,000+ SKUs and over 100 suppliers, even with lead times of up to 8 months
Gratis continues to grow rapidly and invent.ai remains a trusted partner. Together, the companies are focused on ongoing optimization—refining forecasts, improving processes and enabling the agility needed to respond to customer demand.