Exec Summary
Here are the benefits Knix experiences with their investment in Toolio:
- Agile decision-making, powered by Toolio
- Peace of mind during team member transitions. They don’t have to worry about the “spreadsheet wizard” quitting OR fear onboarding new members and having them mess up a complex process or spreadsheet.
- Multi-currency planning is a breeze.
- Streamlined multi-country, multi-location planning.
- Expansion into new channels is supported with workflow best practices and data
About Knix
A direct to consumer intimate apparel brand, Knix reinvents intimates for real life. Launched in 2013, Knix is one of the fastest growing companies in Canada and globally recognized as an innovator within the apparel space. They joined Toolio in 2021 to help them scale and become more agile in planning and merchandising.
Rapidly Changing Environments Require Agility
Like most high-growth retailers, Knix wants to increase sales, improve margin and maintain in-stock rates. Although they've been in business for almost a decade, the culture has not lost its start-up mentality. That means each team and team member looks for ways to add to the bottom line efficiently. For the planning team, they use Toolio to quickly see the impact of any new product or channel introduction to the original plan.
"Toolio has been a game changer!" Chelsea Mifsud, Senior Merchandise Planner said, adding, "Where I previously would have had to hack together many different data pieces and spreadsheets, now I can see the impact of changes in Toolio in minutes and spend my time compiling insights to help the business make better decisions."
Team Expansion
With growth often comes team expansion to support the additional nuances of planning a whole new channel or store openings.
Toolio allows the Knix team to onboard new team members and ensure they follow designated planning protocols. Instead of gate keeping Excel files until they're sure a new hire won't add a column somewhere that breaks everything, they use Toolio's training resources (on-demand on-line and through Toolio's Customer Success team) to onboard new hires. In addition, when a seasoned planner left the team, instead of panic, the remaining team knew that what they’d built in Toolio would be ready for the rest of the team to pick up. No painful desktop file searching. No anxiety around getting the company laptop back. With Toolio, all the data remains at their fingertips, safely secured on the cloud.
In addition to store expansion, the Knix team is also exploring channel expansion in wholesale. As they begin this journey, Toolio can help expedite success. Learning from our other clients, experienced in wholesale, we offer out-of-the-box wholesale views to help get the Knix team started.
Supporting Multi-Country, Multi-Currency Use Case
Operating in both Canada and the United States gives retailers some unique challenges. The logistics of operating in two countries added complexity to warehousing, shipping and store costs, and it complicated backend operations as well. Luckily, Toolio is built for retailers and that means all the complexity that comes with it! Here are the ways we helped support Knix’s international business:
- Integration with multiple Shopify accounts. Many retailers have Shopify set up for specific countries. Toolio seamlessly integrates with multiple Shopify accounts.
- Multi-currency translation. With multiple countries, comes multiple currencies. Toolio ingests different currencies from various sources, converting them to the Knix team’s desired planning currency.
Mifsud continued, “We finally have a comprehensive view into our plans and results across regions and normalized for currency. Not having to manage this data frees up our time to analyze, create different forecasts and scenarios, and ultimately make more informed decisions about inventory.”
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