Want to know how a fast-growing beauty webshop optimized its purchasing strategy and scaled more efficiently to 25 European countries with smart automation? Beauty Plaza shows how data-driven purchasing helps with inventory management, cost savings and strategic growth.

We speak with Manon den Hollander, operational manager at Beauty Plaza. She has witnessed the growth of the company up close. With her broad experience in customer service, purchasing and logistics, she plays a key role in the optimization of business processes and strategic purchasing.

‍

Beauty Plaza is your beauty shop

When Beauty Plaza started its activities in 2011 under the name HBB24 the online shop was the smallest business unit of the chain, which also consists of a number of physical stores.

Manon den Hollander was wearing several hats when she started with the business. “Because the webshop had only just started, as a customer service employee I was also a purchaser, marketeer and logistics employee.” 

Over the last ten years, Beauty Plaza has grown into an international name with German, French and English websites. The company’s reach is greater than ever, with customer orders shipped to 25 European countries. The purchasing, logistics process and customer service departments are still located in Sluis, the Netherlands.

‍

Growth comes with challenges

The story of Beauty Plaza shows how fast - and sometimes turbulently - e-commerce businesses can grow. Manon sums it up quickly: “We have had a move, have gone international with the website and in the meantime have set up several new departments.”

To ensure that Beauty Plaza could continue to grow, it was important to make the company structure and business processes scalable. The purchasing process was of crucial importance and one of the biggest challenges.

As Manon explains: “We were using a min/max stock strategy and that often led to too much stock of products that were sold infrequently.” Beauty Plaza had also to deal with too much obsolete stock in their warehouse.

Automation allows Beauty Plaza to grow further

With the growth of the online shop and their brand awareness, automation was added to their purchasing and order processes. Beauty Plaza already worked with Picqer’s WMS System and added a collaboration with Optiply in June 2020. As both systems can be directly integrated with each other, the onboarding process went very smoothly. 

It was immediately clear to the purchasers of Beauty Plaza that their purchasing process and stock management could benefit enormously from a data-driven purchasing tool. This led to a more structured purchasing process and better insight into the performance of products.

While the purchasing team used to place small replenishment orders, with Optiply’s purchasing advice based on real-time data, the purchasing strategy became more focused.

The stock is more balanced

Manon sees a big step forward. “The biggest gain for Beauty Plaza is that the stock now consists entirely of products that actually sell.” There is also more insight into the performance of products and the stock can be categorised via Optiply.

Automation has ensured that the purchasing process is optimised and better purchasing decisions are made. The stock is balanced, which has led to less obsolete stock.

A new purchasing focus

The purchasing process is less time consuming and small purchases are no longer made on a weekly basis. Optiply’s purchasing advice ensures that orders with a larger volume are now placed every two weeks. This new strategy means that cost savings can be made with lower delivery costs, more bulk order discounts and the purchasers can focus on the more strategic and tactical parts of their work.

Those are the areas where human influence is decisive - such as contact with suppliers and/or adding new brands to the ever-growing range, which now consist of more than 550 quality brands.

Insight gained into supplier performance

Beauty Plaza has also gained more visibility into the performance and delivery reliability of their suppliers through automation. Manon clarifies: “We can now see much better how a supplier performs and/or whether something has been delivered that was not ordered. It is easier to monitor suppliers.”

Time savings thanks to automation

Automation made sure that purchasers could free up time to keep strategic discussions with suppliers going. Manon’s work is intertwined with this: ”I mainly function as a contact person and support the Beauty Plaza Group with purchasing details and a growing amount of export. In addition, suppliers also contact me if they have questions about the webshop or other affiliates in the group.” 

‍

Strengthen position within the European market

Manon indicates that her role within the company is no longer the same. The growth that Beauty is experiencing has led to new opportunities and personal development. “I think it is wonderful to see how far we have come.” 

In addition, Beauty Plaza has optimized its purchasing process and balanced its inventory thanks to Optiply. Through further automation and strategic purchasing, the company can continue to grow and further strengthen its position in the European market.