
In the dynamic women’s fashion industry, YAYA has built a successful lifestyle brand thanks to a clear vision and pragmatic approach to business. In 2019, the company made the switch to the merchandise management solution from Chainbalance to increase efficiency and turnover. Two years on, as YAYA has expanded selling points, Chainbalance has drastically cut the workload on managing allocation and replenishment. It has also accelerated order processing, created better stock levels and keeps stock turns as high as possible to increase sales. YAYA and Chainbalance are now looking at ways to further improve predictions for the entire business.
Highlights
About YAYA
- Dutch lifestyle fashion brand for positive women since 1992
- Comfortable collections which are easy to style and love
- Over 2000 selling points, including 25+ YAYA mono-brand concept stores in 5 countries
- 2019: Felt the need to improve efficiency by automating stock replenishment
Challenges YAYA
To remain competitive, YAYA believes in leveraging data and efficiency. In 2019, they were delivering late and missing sales opportunities because of time-consuming replenishment processes.
Results
- Automated replenishment process to improve accuracy and efficiency
- Cut workload by 80% for replenishment
- More time to spend on new strategies and decision-making
- Healthier balance of inventories – ample bestsellers, less surplus stock
- Keeps stock turns as high as possible to increase sales
- Signals slow movers to address them more quickly
YAYA Dutch lifestyle brand for positive women
Since the women’s fashion brand YAYA began in 1992, it has stood for comfortable and feminine collections, which are easy to style and to love season after season. They are known for designs in soft fabrics and toned-down colours. It all results in items with surprising charm. Add a tough touch to the softness and you’ve got the full YAYA package. YAYA sells everything from clothing and shoes to bags and home accessories worldwide. The collection is sold via independent multi-brand retailers, soft shops, shop-in-shop and 25+ YAYA mono-brand concept stores in 5 countries. On top of this, there is an e-shop foundat YAYA.nl.
Women’s fashion is a complex industry that’s seen big changes in the past few years, even before the Corona crisis shook things up. To navigate a steady course in this dynamic sector, you need a clear vision and pragmatic approach to business decisions. YAYA displays all that, as well as a love of automation and efficiency. It’s no surprise that even in the most challenging times YAYA continues to achieve steady growth.
“I love data and efficiency, and I knew if we could automate our allocation and replenishment processes it would give us a big efficiency gain.”
Keep reaching for the stars
The philosophy of YAYA is clear. “There is only one customer and that is the consumer. They determine everything we do,” says Patrick Draijer, Owner and Sales Director of YAYA.
“In these Corona times, there is no uniformity in buying. Retail shops in some countries are open, but others aren’t. It’s difficult to remain calm in these uncertain times, but I believe in ‘moonshot thinking’ as John F. Kennedy said. Sometimes you just have to keep reaching for the stars and working towards your goals to keep everyone moving forward.”
“We have a very consistent rhythm in our concept. We are not fast fashion, but we deliver new items to our stores every month that is ready to wear. Our customers enjoy an elegant and relaxed shopping experience in our brand stores, and can receive objective advice from our fashion consultants.”
"Chainbalance records the sales and stock on SKU level for a certain period to set the right target stock levels and create orders. This simply wasn’t possible at that high level of detail in our old replenishment system."

Where we come from: missing efficiency
In 2019, YAYA had some difficulties in making replenishment deliveries to its 10 retail stores. “It took a lot of time and energy every week to get the stock replenishment orders right. Initially, it was also taking a lot of time to create and pick orders, meaning we were sometimes delivering late in the evening, so we were missing opportunities,” says Draijer. “I love data and efficiency, and I knew if we could automate our allocation and replenishment processes it would give us a big efficiency gain.”
“There are a lot of our retail customers who are emotional buyers. They don’t know what their actual numbers are, and have difficulty choosing things. It was also my goal to get our retailers to work with us in a more automated way so they can make data-based decisions that are much smarter.”
Where we are now: Strategic decision for Chainbalance
When the staff at YAYA met up with the Chainbalance team, they clicked with each other and decided to start a pilot with two YAYA stores. “At the time, we were putting all of the allocation and replenishment numbers for our 10 retail stores into an Excel spreadsheet twice a week. This took us two mornings a week,” says Leonie. “Chainbalance was interesting to us because we wanted to have a higher level of replenishment, better stock levels and more time for further analyses.”
“It was very important for us to get this right,” says Bestevaar. “By doing this well, you have better stock levels with higher stock turns and a higher turnover as a result. The right articles are supplied and the orders are immediately processed.”
Leonie Bestevaar saw one advantage right away. “The Chainbalance solution records the sales and stock on SKU level for a certain period to set the right target stock levels and create orders. This simply wasn’t possible at that high level of detail in our old replenishment system. Based on the success of the pilot, YAYA quickly decided to roll out Chainbalance in all of its retail stores.
“Our workload has gone way down. Now we are only spending 2 hours a week compared to 8 hours a week on managing allocation and replenishment. And that’s for twice as many stores – 21 stores versus 10 stores in the beginning.”
Saves time, increases stock turns
“Our workload has gone way down. Now we are only spending 2 hours a week compared to 8 hours a week on managing allocation and replenishment. And that’s for twice as many stores – 21 stores versus 10 stores in the beginning,” says Bestevaar. “Chainbalance takes over the most time-consuming work so I can spend my time on making more strategic and creative decisions.”
“I know that we waste less time by using Chainbalance,” says Draijer. “We can do our replenishment process faster so that in the morning the order runs are ready in the warehouse and in the afternoon they can be picked. That means we can process more orders.”
Good support
Bestevaar: “At first, I put a lot of time into understanding the new solution. During the pilot, we ran our old system and Chainbalance together, so I could compare the two systems. I checked the results for every order to see if I would have made the same decision. Marloes from Chainbalance was very supportive in this process. She was always available to explain things to me and help me learn how the solution worked.”
“This was also a good learning process for us,” says Marloes Koijen, Project Manager at Chainbalance. “The questions that Leonie had, helped me understand what things we could explain better or could adjust in our solution. We used that information to help our other customers.”
“Marloes and her team always listen to us,” adds Bestevaar. “Sometimes they can make a change for us and sometimes not, but they always treat our comments seriously. They have a super back office and I can always talk to them if I need help.”
Next step - Predicting the future
“Chainbalance has automated our entire replenishment flow to make it more efficient,” says Patrick. “That’s nice, but I think it can do a lot more. I want to gain more insight from this solution to make decisions for the future. I want it to tell me if you are a store with these tags, this is my suggested buy for future collections. Then when my retailers come to me, I can say out of your historic data, these are the decisions you should make. We’re currently looking at how to make that happen with Chainbalance.”