CONSUMER DEMAND FORECASTING FOR £10 - £350M CONSUMER GOODS SUPPLIERS
You don't have an inventory problem.
You have a planning problem.
Excess stock, tight cash, high working capital and difficult retailer conversations all trace back to the same decision: forecasting
from what customers replenished last year instead of what
consumers will buy next.
No pitch deck. We'll work out what your forecasting gap is costing you.
Sound familiar?
These look like four separate problems. They're four symptoms of one cause.
01
Excess
inventory
The warehouse is full. Outside storage is on the phone. Yet somehow the products consumers want are still running short.
02
Poor
cash flow
Every pallet sitting in a warehouse is cash waiting to come home.
03
High working capital
Cash trapped in inventory that could be funding growth.
04
Strained relationships
Missed OTIF, service penalties and buyers who've stopped believing your delivery promises.
THE MISDIAGNOSIS
Most businesses treat the symptoms
When stock piles up and service slips, the instinctive fixes are:
Excess inventory
Tune the statistical forecast on last year's sales history
x
Excess inventory
Buy an ERP or off-the-shelf forecasting software
x
Excess inventory
Add safety stock "just to be sure"
x
All three share the same flaw.
They plan the future from your sell-in history:
what your customers ordered, months ago, for reasons that no longer apply.
Two ways to build a forecast
REAR-VIEW MIRROR
Sell-in history → statistical extrapolation → production commitment. Every surprise becomes firefighting.
WINDSCREEN
Consumer Sales + customer inventory + promotions + range changes → predicted replenishment → a plan you can defend.
Sales history tells you how customers replenished in the past. It says nothing about what their consumers will buy next, what stock your customer is already holding, or what promotions are coming.
It's like driving a car by looking only in the rear-view mirror.
You'll stay on the road right up until the road bends.
THE CURE
Plan from consumer demand, and the four problems start solving themselves
Consumer demand forecasting starts with what shoppers actually buy off the shelf, then models how your customer's inventory will respond. The result is a replenishment plan aligned to real demand, built from signals like:
Consumer sell-out data
New Product launches
Customer inventory levels
Retailer Promotions
Distribution changes
Seasonal drivers
FROM: OVERSTOCKED
TO: RIGHT SIZED
Excess inventory
falls
When production follows real consumer demand instead of hopeful forecast based on sell-in, the buffer stock that covered guesswork stops being needed.
FROM: CASH TRAPPED
TO: CASH RELEASED
Cash flow
improves
Less stock means less cash sitting in the warehouse. Working capital comes down and stays down, because the cause is fixed, not managed.
FROM: FIREFIGHTING
TO: FORESIGHT
Working capital funds growth
Money that was financing stock becomes money that finances range extensions, new listings and marketing.
FROM: SUPPLIER
TO: PARTNER
Customers start to trust you
You arrive at reviews talking about their consumers, their inventory and their category. That's a conversation your competitors can't have.
PROOF
“Since aligning our plans on consumer demand, we've restored trust through consistent on-time delivery. That improved supply has been rewarded with listings growth netting £500,000 in additional revenue.”
Chris Howarth, Sales Director, HoX Global
60% → 98%
Delivery performance improvement for a supplier to a top UK grocer, repairing a broken customer relationship.
+33%
Listings and revenue growth the following season, repeated again the season after.
6 - 8 weeks
From first workshop to a working, bespoke planning engine your team runs themselves.
WHO YOU'LL WORK WITH
I've watched this problem cost $100m. Once was enough.
I'm Neil Marchant. I spent 25 years in FMCG supply chains, including 5 years alongside the European leadership team of one of the world's biggest consumer goods businesses. The year before I joined, they wrote off close to $100m of European stock to make room for the next season's containers, already on the water.
The root cause wasn't the warehouse or the factory. It was a planning culture built on backward-looking sell-in and monthly consensus meetings where the loudest voice won.
That experience changed my career. MET exists to give growing consumer goods suppliers the planning capability the giants pay millions for, without the cost or complexity of enterprise consultancies.
HOW WE WORK
Three steps. No 40-page strategy deck.
Step 1
Diagnose
A structured look at your forecasting process, service performance and inventory trends. You get a clear root-cause diagnosis and a costed roadmap, whether or not we work together afterwards.
Step 2
Fix the Plan
We rebuild forecasting around consumer demand and align commercial, planning and operations behind one set of numbers. Built with your team, not done to them.
Step 3
Build the engine
A bespoke planning engine on the Lumina AI platform, live in 6–8 weeks. One version of the truth, sized for an SME, so your team plans the business instead of maintaining spreadsheets.