Nordiska Galleriet

Nordiska Galleriet, one of Europe’s leading premium design and interiors retailers, has implemented Slimstock’s solution to gain greater inventory control, improve decision-making and balance service levels with tied-up capital.

Nordiska Galleriet offers a carefully selected portfolio of premium design and exclusive interiors. With a carefully curated range, international suppliers and high demands on the customer experience, the business needs to balance availability, tied-up capital and efficient inventory management.

As Nordiska Galleriet’s product range expanded and its operations became more complex, manual forecasting, purchasing and inventory planning became increasingly difficult to scale. By implementing Slimstock’s solution from Slimstock, the company has gained greater visibility, reduced manual work and created a more scalable approach to decision-making.

A business where precision is crucial

Founded in Sweden in 1912, Nordiska Galleriet has long been associated with the highest standards in luxury design and interior furnishing across the Nordic countries. Today, the business encompasses retail stores, e-commerce, trade sales and interior design services, offering products from some of the world’s best-known brands.

The business is characterised by high complexity. Many products have long lead times, high order values and require special orders where customers can choose materials, colours and finishes themselves. Demand is also affected by the housing market, the economy, trends and seasonal variations.

Nordiska Galleriet knows that inventory management involves much more than stockpiling products: ensuring availability, delivering experiences that delight customers, and optimising capital use all fall under this heading.

”A major challenge is combining a high service level and a strong customer experience with efficient inventory management and good use of capital”, says Martin Jarl, Chief Commercial Officer at Nordiska Galleriet.

When manual ways of working became difficult to scale

Previously, large parts of the planning were based on manual processes, internal Excel models and individual experience. This worked for a period, but as the business grew, the way of working became increasingly difficult to scale.

Forecasting, purchasing planning and follow-up took a great deal of time. At the same time, much of the knowledge was held by individual people in the organisation, which created dependency on individuals and vulnerability in ongoing planning.

“I became a bottleneck in parts of the process. This created a dependence on manual analyses and a great deal of operational work”, says Martin Jarl.

The goal became to create a way of working in which more people could make well-founded decisions, where planning was less dependent on individuals and where the business could continue to grow without the operational workload increasing at the same rate.

A more structured and proactive way of working

The choice fell on Slimstock and it’s planning platform. A decisive factor was that the solution could be adapted to Nordiska Galleriet’s reality, with varying lead times, different product flows and a combination of stocked products and special orders.

“It was not only about system functionality, but also about flexibility and an understanding of how we work as a business”, says Martin Jarl.

Since the implementation, the team has been working more proactively with purchasing, forecasts and inventory flows. The organisation has gained better visibility of needs, priorities and deviations, while decision-making has become faster and less dependent on individual people.

In day-to-day work, the change is noticeable through:

• faster decisions in planning
• fewer manual steps and less time in Excel
• better control over orders, needs and deviations
• easier onboarding of new employees
• less stress and fewer urgent interventions in planning work

“We spend less time on manual analyses and operational firefighting and more time on decisions and priorities”, says Martin Jarl.

Better control over inventory, purchasing and tied-up capital

For a premium player such as Nordiska Galleriet, inventory management is an important part of both the customer experience and profitability. The right products need to be available at the right time, while tied-up capital is kept at a healthy level.

With Slimstock’s solution, Nordiska Galleriet gains better visibility into forecasted sales, required purchases, and inventory movements, enabling tighter control over the inventory itself. That visibility means that Nordiska Galleriet will be able to detect potential overstocks early on.

For Nordiska Galleriet, this means making faster, better-informed decisions while balancing product availability, tied-up capital and operational efficiency.

A more scalable foundation for continued growth

In the coming years, the focus will be on continued growth, development of the omnichannel offering and an even stronger customer experience. To succeed, the business needs to be able to grow without complexity increasing at the same rate.

Nordiska Galleriet sees Slimstock as an important partner in its continued development.

“As the business grows, it becomes even more important to be able to make faster and better decisions with the right balance between service level, inventory and tied-up capital”, says Martin Jarl.

For Nordiska Galleriet, the implementation has removed reliance on the personal knowledge base of specific individuals and saved hours in tedious manual tasks. More crucially still, however, it has established a robust foundation for future growth, without adding the burden of unnecessary complexity.

“For us, it was not only about optimising inventory management. It was about creating a business that can grow without the organisation losing efficiency”, says Martin Jarl, Chief Commercial Officer at Nordiska Galleriet.