• The South African multi-brand footwear retailer will now optimize product availability with powerful demand forecasting, allocation, and replenishment in 200+ stores across the nation.
• The partnership marks Nextail’s official entry into the African retail market.

Madrid: South African multi-brand footwear retailer, Footgear, and smart retail merchandising platform Nextail, have joined forces to bring the power of scale and digital transformation to the brand’s core retail merchandising processes. As a first step in the partnership, Footgear will implement in-season solutions across its footprint of more than 200 stores nationwide. The new agreement also allows Nextail to extend its reach within the African retail market.

Over its 22-year history, Footgear relied on spreadsheet-based tools for planning and forecasting in-season inventory management. However, with the brand’s ambitious growth strategy, these methods proved challenging to scale. Consequently, Footgear recognized the importance of a centralized information source, better system integration, streamlined manual processes, and improved inventory visibility across its retail network.

Now, with powerful in-season retail merchandising solutions in place, Footgear will benefit from agility, speed and better anticipation of demand to maximize sell-through. In turn, Footgear will be able to make ongoing adjustments to product offerings at its many points of sale to meet customer demand, no matter how it has changed since pre-season planning or continues to evolve.

Footgear CEO Neil Stephens emphasized the strong alignment between Footgear and Nextail stating, “We firmly believe that Nextail’s fashion-first approach, automation and advanced forecasting capabilities will help us best deliver on our customer promise to offer the best shoe brands at affordable prices and an excellent in-store experience across South Africa. By automating and optimizing our core retail merchandising processes, we can continue satisfying customers while ensuring a similar cost-to-serve as we expand our presence nationwide.”

“We are delighted to be a part of Footgear’s transformation journey and assist them in harnessing the advantages of automated, data-driven decision-making within their core merchandising processes,” stated Juan Avedillo, Co-CEO of Nextail. “This partnership marks a significant milestone for Nextail in the African region, unlocking fresh avenues to broaden our market presence and explore new opportunities.”

About Footgear
At Footgear, you can find the biggest brands at the best prices. Officially kicking off in 2001, Footgear had the goal of getting the best shoe brands onto South African feet without breaking their pockets. Since then, we’ve grown from a small single store in Cape Town to 220 stores nationwide, serving the whole family with the best shoe brands from around the world like Adidas, Puma, Converse & Reebok.

At Footgear, we believe the customer is king and our customers’ in-store experience is paramount to us!