- The proven value of the Nextail distribution solutions has led the Spanish footwear and market leader to sign a multi-year contract extension which includes the newest solution, Insights, and collaboration to enrich the latest Nextail upstream solutions within the footwear space.
- Merkal plans on a full end-to-end integration of Nextail in 2024.
Madrid, Spain – Leading Spanish footwear chain, Merkal, and smart retail merchandising platform, Nextail, have today announced a multi-year extension of their partnership. This strategic move reaffirms Merkal’s commitment to satisfying customers through a convenient, agile, and omnichannel shopping experience and offering a wide variety of fashion products to the whole family through the game-changing digital transformation of their core merchandising processes.
The extended contract agreement will allow Merkal to continue reaping the benefits of robust demand forecasting and the automation of the retailer’s down-stream merchandising processes for allocation, replenishment, and stock rebalancing across its footprint of more than 200 stores. In addition, Merkal will be implementing the newest advanced analytics solution from Nextail, Insights, which delivers real-time advanced analytical capabilities and recommendations for the next best merchandising action for the footwear retailer to take at all times.
The positive business results delivered by Nextail’s in-season solutions has resulted in a strengthened partnership, with Merkal playing a key role in enhancing the latest Nextail pre-season solutions for assortment planning and markdown. This collaboration will help to further evolve Nextail solutions within the footwear vertical. And as part of this continued partnership, Merkal is planning a full end-to-end implementation of Nextail solutions in 2024.
Commenting on the extended partnership, Alberto García, CSCO of Merkal said, “Nextail has been instrumental in helping us achieve three critical goals in the highly competitive footwear industry: optimizing store capacity through increased sales with less stock, reducing lost sales opportunities due to stockouts, and enhancing size availability in stores through better consolidation. With Nextail, we have been able to completely transform our core merchandising processes and improve our overall business performance. The extension of our partnership demonstrates our commitment to providing customers with a great shopping experience by way of advanced retail tech.”
“We are delighted to have found such a strong innovation partner in Merkal and we look forward to accompanying them on their continued digital transformation journey. The expansion of our relationship demonstrates the value that Nextail provides to such strong and established brands, and we will continue to be an innovative and committed business partner to Merkal in the years to come,” says Brian Crain, Nextail CRO.
About Merkal Calzados
Merkal Calzados, Spanish market leader in footwear, strives daily to meet their mission of satisfying customers through a convenient, agile, and omnichannel shopping experience, offering a wide variety of fashion products for the whole family at the best value. The story goes back to 1987 with the opening of the first physical store in the Barcelona municipality of Igualada. Today, the Merkal network is spread across 200+ points of sale nationwide. This success is possible due to the strong trust between Merkal and its customers and the hard work of 1,200 members of the Merkal team. Since 2017, Merkal has belonged to the OpCapita Consumer Opportunities Fund II LP.
