Case studies
What changes when the systems are read together.
The same finding turns up in every deployment. The data was already in the systems the retailer runs and was never read together, so one person had to hold the whole business in their head. Below: what that costs, and what it looks like once it stops. Retailers are not named.
Every deployment
7 days
From connection to a live position
Daily
Numbers refreshed from the systems already running
0
Reports re-keyed or reconciled by hand
1
Position across every region, currency and department
Read on their own connections, on the platforms the retailer already runs. Nothing re-keyed.
Running the whole platform
Weekly cycle · trade, stock, margin, marketing, cash, people and strategy
Before
There is no summary, because the executive is the summary. Every week they pull the regions together in their own head — what each market is doing, where competitors have moved, which trends are running, what activations are coming, which deliveries are landing — and work out from all of it what to act on and whether it still serves the strategy. The twenty-page trade deck, presented department by department, does none of that work. It typically starts on a Sunday evening, with the most expensive person in the business, and none of the thinking is kept.
Now
Laminir does the aggregation. Every region and department read together against the anchors the executive team or board set, with market movement, forward activations and delivery timing in the same picture, and the calls that follow already made and reasoned. The trade deck still happens — it is simply no longer where the executive works out what is going on. They arrive with the position, and spend the meeting testing it rather than assembling it.
What changed
The systems stopped being separate
Trade, stock, margin, marketing, cash, people and strategy were each true inside their own platform and nowhere together. Laminir reads all of them on their own connections and holds one position across every region, currency and department. Nothing is re-keyed, nothing is reconciled by hand, and there is no longer a version of the number that belongs to one department.
The consolidation stopped being a person
The weekly synthesis that used to happen in one executive's head now exists before anyone opens the deck — written down, reasoned, and still there next quarter. Two hours a week came back to the most expensive person in the business, and the reasoning behind each call survives them being on a plane.
Strategy stopped living in a deck
The anchors the board set are what the weekly position is read against, rather than a document revisited each quarter. Every KPI carries a named owner and a current number, each director works their own scorecard rather than reading the executive's, and an initiative holds a state — on track, at risk, closed out — that is visible between meetings instead of at the end of one.
Transparency changed what gets argued about
Every department reads the same position, sourced from the same place. The meeting moved from establishing whose number is right to deciding what to do about it, which is where the EBITDA movement came from.
Measured
+2.4pts
EBITDA
2+ hrs
Returned to the executive, every week
60%
Of weekly reporting produced without manual consolidation
50%
Less time assembling the board pack
3
Regions in one position, each in its own currency
Any day
A trading P&L current on demand, not after close
Every
KPI with a named owner and a current number
95%
Of strategy initiatives closed out on time
Read from
Running one agent
Monthly cycle · buying only
Before
No structure around the buy. Budget committed months ahead across dozens of brands, with no brand-level view of what was left to spend. Commitments held in a spreadsheet and a notebook, because the purchase order was not raised until the stock landed. Brand performance reviewed from memory and a sales export, and aged stock reviewed at season end, by which point the clearance was deeper than it needed to be.
Now
The buy runs end to end in Laminir, against live trading numbers, and against a deliberate position for the year: a sales plan up 10% bought with 8% less stock. The brand brief opens inside the appointment with that brand's category performance, historical buys and what is already committed to it. Orders upload straight from the wholesale platform, and the open to buy moves the moment a commitment is recorded — so the next appointment starts against a figure that is already current.
What changed
Less stock, into a bigger plan
The sales plan is up 10% and the buy is coming down 8% — a net reduction, not a reallocation. That only holds if every brand is read before it is reordered and the budget is current at the moment the order is written, which is the job the agent does. The year is targeting a blended gross margin 2% better on less stock.
Every brand is visible, not the ten the buyer remembers
The whole book is read the same way — category-level performance, historical buys, cover, aged stock and what is already committed, for every brand rather than the handful that come to mind in a showroom. Brands already carrying cover stopped being reordered, and brands performing without anyone noticing stopped being underbought.
The open to buy moves with the buy
A commitment recorded at market updates the season and the month it lands in immediately. There is no end-of-trip reconciliation, no spreadsheet version, and no appointment run against a budget that was true a fortnight ago.
Planned, and measured so far
+10%
Sales plan for the year
−8%
Net reduction in the total buy, against that plan
+2pts
Blended gross margin, targeted for the year
2.5
Planned stock turn, up from 2.1
−18%
Closing stock at year end, against last year
30%+
Less preparation per brand, every buying cycle
Live
Open to buy, updated with every commitment recorded
Every
Brand in the book read the same way
Read from
Reported from live deployments. Your figures will differ.
What shows up every time.
Five things found in every book opened so far, whatever the size of the business or the system it runs on. None of them are visible from inside a single platform, which is why they survive for years.
The brand tags are wrong, and nothing says so
Whether a brand is written at market or reordered through the season decides how it is planned. Tagged wrong, it quietly drops out of the buying decision and distorts how much of the budget reads as seasonal. On one book, seven major brands were mis-tagged, including the largest.
Aged stock is found at season end
By the time the review happens the clearance is deeper than it needed to be. Nothing about the stock changed — only how late it was looked at.
Open to buy is treated as a pot to spend down
It is not a season allowance. It is recalculated against where stock actually stands, so a season that opens light needs more than the plan said, and a season that over-delivered needs less. Spending to the original figure does the opposite of what the position calls for.
The recommendation list is too long to finish
A list of forty brands to review is not a decision list, it is a backlog, and a buyer with a flight to catch ignores it. What matters is which brands genuinely need a call this month.
Commitments exist outside any system until the stock lands
The purchase order is raised on receipt, so everything written at market sits in a spreadsheet and a notebook for months. It is where double orders happen, and why the budget on screen is never the budget that was actually spent.
Start with one agent or take the whole platform.