Case Study
With Crisp, Illy brews up fresh insights and boosts business by 10%.
Illy uses Crisp’s real-time dashboards to review stock on a day-to-day basis and ensure that there’s always plenty of product to meet their targets.
Situation
An Italian brand with global ambition
Iconic Italian brand Illy is known for its premium coffee packaged in a patented stay-fresh canister, along with a dedication to sustainability and social impact in the global communities that grow Illy’s top-grade Arabica beans. A long-standing mainstay in the hospitality realm, Illy has spent the past few years on a mission to become a household name in U.S grocery.
UNFI has been a key partner to unlocking that growth in the natural channel, helping Illy expand nationally in Whole Foods and in popular regional chains around the country. To make their distribution business a success, Illy’s sales team knew they needed visibility to track inventory, orders, and sales across their distribution. Taelor Conley-Marselle joined Illy in early 2022 as Director of Sales to expand the company’s U.S. footprint, and was happy to see that the team was already onboarding with Crisp.
Solution
Wake up, drink coffee, check Crisp
Nearly every day, Taelor checks Crisp to track inventory and better support Illy’s retailer partners. Her first focus was building the relationship with her supplier manager at UNFI, helping her understand Illy’s seasonality, peak time frames, and volume by Distribution Center to improve demand planning. With this alignment in place, Taelor can dig further into the data. She can see how inventory has depleted at each DC year-over-year and compare it to consumption patterns. If the pace of orders hasn’t kept up, she works with buyers to increase volume. This adds up to real wins: Taelor reports that by leveraging data in Crisp, Illy’s overall business has grown by 10% in the past year and a half.
Taelor also uses Crisp to spot voids and keep shelves stocked. This was particularly useful across Whole Foods locations in Southern California where the move from a regional to a global brand was causing out-of-stock incidents. Thanks to Crisp, Taelor could pinpoint where the planogram change had not been properly executed and work with area managers to get products back on the shelf. For Taelor, being able to look at inventory on a day-to-day basis and supply DCs with additional weeks of supply ensures there’s always plenty of product to meet Illy’s buying targets.
Perfectly balanced results:
• Grew retail business by 10%
• Increased DC inventory to ensure adequate weeks of supply
• Prevented out-of-stock issues across Southern California
• Built a stronger partnership with UNFI buyers
Favorite Insight:
Inventory on hand by DC
Monitors inventory levels at DCs to keep products in stock.
“With Crisp, we can manage inventory on hand to ensure there is enough product to meet demand and hit our volume targets for the year.”
Taelor Conley-Marselle
Director of Sales
Always be Data Ready with Crisp
Crisp allows food brands and retailers to stay ahead of rapidly evolving consumer behavior, identify potential supply chain disruptions, track inventory and product performance. It’s easy and quick to get started so you can be Data Ready.