Case Study: Leanin' Tree achieves 81% fewer stockouts and 5-day lead times with Demand Solutions

Leanin’ Tree - Customer Case Study

Leanin’ Tree, a Boulder-based greeting card manufacturer publishing about 20 million cards annually, faced a labor-intensive manual forecasting process, poor visibility into where inventory sat across three buildings, and long in-house lead times as it prepared to implement a new ERP. To preserve forecasting functionality it relied on Demand Solutions’ Demand Solutions Forecast Management (DS FM), which it purchased in 1992 and implemented in 1993.

Demand Solutions’ DS FM automated forecasting (using 42 weeks of history and 20 formulas), integrated with Leanin’ Tree’s MRP and later fed forecasts into SAP, and helped centralize inventory into one warehouse. The solution cut stockouts by 81% since 1993 while SKUs doubled, reduced in-house lead-times from 13 weeks to five days, and enabled 72-hour custom-order turnaround 95–98% of the time, materially improving customer service.

Leanin’ Tree

Lloyd Peirce

Materials Manager