Case Study: Brooks Sports achieves 40% more accurate forecasts with Forecast Pro

Collaborative Forecasting Running Collaborative Forecasting Running Smoothly at Brooks Sports Smoothly at Brooks Sports

Brooks Sports, a global designer of high‑performance running footwear and apparel, shifted its product strategy in 2001 to focus on serious runners and found its judgment‑based forecasting process unable to support rapid, uneven style growth. Challenges included wide variation in style growth, long production planning horizons versus short product life, a jump in “at‑once” orders, changing size curves, and lack of retail sell‑through data — problems Brooks addressed by adopting Forecast Pro software to generate statistical forecasts at the SKU level.

Brooks created an independent forecasting group and a collaborative process that combined Forecast Pro’s monthly statistical and event‑modeling forecasts with quarterly sales input collected via the web, allowing judgmental overrides and hierarchical consistency before feeding final forecasts into the ERP system. Using Forecast Pro, Brooks improved forecast accuracy by about 40%, cut unfulfilled demand from ~20% to under 5%, reduced closeouts by over 60%, and smoothed production—lowering costs and improving margins.

Brooks Sports

Tom Ross

Financial Analyst