Centric Software®, the Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) market leader, is excited to announce the acquisition of aifora™, the AI-powered price and inventory optimization solution. Centric Software provides the most innovative enterprise solutions to plan, design, develop, source, price and sell products such as apparel, fashion, home, footwear, sporting goods, consumer electronics, cosmetics, food & beverage and luxury to achieve strategic and operational digital transformation goals.
Founded in Düsseldorf, Germany in 2017 by Thomas Jesewski and David Krings, aifora is an AI-driven, best-in-class predictive pricing retail automation platform that enables brands and retailers to achieve continuous growth and profitability improvement through data-driven pricing, inventory management and allocation practices.
As changing consumer demand as well as economic and market conditions force retail to adapt, retailers globally are turning to artificial intelligence and predictive pricing to optimize their pricing strategies, maximize margins, increase revenues, and improve competitiveness. Although predictive pricing is an emerging concept, it has already demonstrated its value, by potentially increasing revenues 6-18%, improving margins 4-15% and reducing discounting up to 60%.
“Retailers are unable to respond effectively to today’s data-driven world by using spreadsheets and manual methods to optimize initial price, promotions and markdowns – especially when they have to do it across multiple channels and countries for thousands of SKUs,” explains David Krings, CTO & Cofounder of aifora. “That’s where aifora comes in, giving retailers interactive insights and guidance to predict future demand and replenishment needs so that they can price more profitably.”
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Focused on the needs of trend-driven, highly seasonal goods such as fashion, apparel, footwear and home, aifora’s easily configured, easy to use SaaS platform offers predictive algorithms and machine learning models to interactively optimize pricing across various stages of the retail lifecycle. aifora’s solutions also enhance inventory allocation and replenishment, enabling businesses to optimize supply chains and reduce overstock or stockouts to align with sustainability initiatives.
German clothing retailer NKD has achieved significant ROI with aifora.
“The retail landscape is more intricate than ever before,” says Abraham Tadesse, Director Merchandise Management & Data Science at NKD Group GmbH. “Relying on innovative technology like aifora to optimize pricing has been essential for NKD to increase sales and margins, giving time back to our teams so they can focus elsewhere. As the leading value retailer among clothing discounters in Europe, we’re excited to learn that our long-time, trusted partner aifora, is joining forces with the number one consumer products concept-to-launch platform.”
German fashion brand and retailer Wöhrl has been an aifora customer since 2021.
Thomas Rothe, COO of WÖHRL, says, “aifora has enabled us to predict consumer demand more accurately so that we can produce the right amount of inventory and price competitively to improve the rate of sell-through at full price. With the power of AI, we can make better decisions and understand our pricing in a way that would be impossible using manual methods.”
Like Centric Software, aifora has developed solutions based on rich industry experience and best practices. aifora complements the Centric family of solutions, including flagship solution Centric PLM™, Centric Planning™, Centric Pricing™ and the innovative visual collaboration platform, Centric Visual Boards™. Centric Software will seamlessly integrate aifora with existing solutions to provide significant improvements in revenue, product margin and inventory management for brands and retailers.
“Centric Software and aifora both deeply understand the needs of brands and retailers, and we highly attuned to the challenges faced by the industry,” says Thomas Jesewski, CEO and Co-Founder of aifora. “With Centric solutions and aifora combined, brands and retailers will have access to an unprecedented suite of powerful tools to make informed decisions, leverage actionable insights and improve profitability.”
“We would like to warmly welcome aifora to the Centric family as we combine forces to meet the needs of consumer goods companies,” says Chris Groves, CEO of Centric Software. “Together, we will drive innovation and continue to lead the way in delivering cutting-edge solutions. aifora and Centric share the same innovation vision and the same customer-focused culture. We look forward to innovating together and integrating our solutions to continue to delight and add exceptional value to our customers.”
SOURCE: PRWeb