Your EPOS knows what sold yesterday. Your stock system knows what is on the shelf. Neither knows what to buy for October, how much cash that takes, or which lines will be dead by January. That gap is where retail margin goes to die, and it is the gap Optimal Chain fills.
The retail problem is not counting. It is committing.
Retail inventory software almost always means one of two things: the stock counter inside your EPOS or ecommerce platform, or a multichannel sync tool keeping Shopify, Amazon and the shop floor honest. Both matter. Neither answers the question that actually sets your margin: how much of each line do you commit to, weeks or months before the demand shows up?
Get that wrong one way and the bestseller is gone by the second week of the season, with full-price sales lost to whoever stocked deeper. Get it wrong the other way and January is a clearance sale of your own buying mistakes, each markdown a small written confession. Most retailers make these calls in a spreadsheet, on gut feel, with last year's numbers and this year's hope.
A forecast for every product, not a formula for all of them
Optimal Chain reads a sales export from whatever you run today. Every product then gets its own forecast, built by a tournament of 18 forecasting methods: trend experts, seasonal experts, sparse-demand experts for lines that sell twice a month, and a machine-learning layer that spots patterns across the whole range, like forty products that always surge together in March. Each method is blind-tested on that product's own history and the winner earns the forecast. You can open any product and see the scores.
Seasonal line · 365-day forward projection
Peak demand window
Nov–Dec
Projected stockout
4 Dec
Forecast demandBuffer stock (rises before the peak, falls after)
Range health · 2,340 SKUs
Cash in dead + excess stock
£214,600
Lines at stockout risk
37
Healthy1,498
Overstocked515
Stockout risk211
Dead stock116
Every line carries a date and a £ figure, so markdowns happen on evidence, not instinct.
Seasonal lines are not erratic. Stop letting software call them that.
Legacy tools classify products by how much sales wobble across the year, so a perfectly regular Christmas line gets branded erratic and buried in safety stock all year round. Optimal Chain grades products on forecast error instead: can this line actually be predicted? A clean seasonal peak can. The practical difference shows in the chart above. Buffer stock climbs ahead of your peak and falls away after it, releasing cash automatically instead of holding a December-sized cushion in April.
The buy, planned to the money you actually have
Retail buying is a budget exercise. Open-to-buy is the discipline, and no counting tool does the maths. In Optimal Chain you type the number, £120,000 for the period, and the Replenishment Budget Planner allocates it across every product and supplier to the penny. The most urgent revenue is funded first, every supplier minimum is respected, and small suppliers with chunky minimums are protected so vital lines are not starved. Drag the slider and the entire plan re-computes in milliseconds, so what if we spent £20k less is a question you answer in a meeting, live.
When a supplier offers a volume deal, 8% off if you take 5,000 units, the Deal Optimiser tells you whether it is genuinely a saving once holding costs are counted, and hands you the exact break-even price to take into the call. When a supplier wobbles, the Disruption Planner shows the £ damage of a delay and the adjusted orders to cover it, in about a minute.
Does Optimal Chain replace my EPOS or ecommerce platform?
No. Keep your till, your website and your stock system. Optimal Chain is the planning layer on top: it reads a sales export from whatever you run, forecasts every product, and plans the buying. Nothing to install and no integration project. If your system can export a spreadsheet, you are live in days.
How does it handle seasonal retail products?
Better than the standard approach, which mislabels seasonal lines as erratic because sales wobble through the year. Optimal Chain grades products on whether they can actually be predicted, and a regular Christmas peak is highly predictable. Buffers follow the season too: they rise before your peak and fall after it, releasing cash automatically.
Can it plan to an open-to-buy budget?
Yes. Type in the budget for the period and the Replenishment Budget Planner allocates it across every product and supplier to the penny, funding the most urgent revenue first and respecting every minimum order quantity. Drag the slider and the whole plan re-computes instantly.
What does it cost for a retail catalogue?
Pricing depends only on how many products you stock, from £199 per month for up to 500 products. Every capability is on every plan, setup is included, and the full price list is published. No per-seat fees and no quote forms.
See your range the way the engine sees it
Send a sales export from your EPOS or ecommerce platform and get a free blueprint of your own catalogue: a forecast for every line, the seasonal peaks mapped, and the £ figure hiding in dead and excess stock. No card, no sales calls.