Packaging optimization: La Redoute x Flowlity case study

La Redoute, founded in 1837 with €875 million in revenue (2019) and 1,700 employees, is a historic French player in distance selling and e-commerce. Operating in a record-growth, increasingly demanding and competitive sector, the company set two priorities for its packaging operations: offering the best customer experience by ensuring the most appropriate packaging for each product purchased, and reducing environmental impact. Packaging operations covered 20 references (bags and boxes) across two warehouses, Quai 30 and Building Z, with the two sites having different operational roles (Quai 30 doubles as both storage and packaging area; Building Z is storage only). Before Flowlity, replenishment was not synchronized with suppliers and the two-site setup was managed without a unified planning view. The decision to optimize packaging inventory came from the recognition that customer experience excellence and environmental responsibility both depended on better packaging selection and right-sized inventory at each site.

La Redoute's drive for excellence in e-commerce combined two motivations that packaging optimization could address simultaneously: customer experience and environmental impact. Every package shipped is a touchpoint with the customer, and the company explicitly aimed to deliver the most appropriate packaging for each product purchased to maintain an optimal unboxing experience. In parallel, the company wanted to reduce its environmental footprint, a priority that has only grown more visible in e-commerce. Flowlity's solution was selected to handle both goals at once: AI-driven consumption forecasts, safety stock recommendations, and supply recommendations for suppliers, applied to the 20 packaging references at Quai 30 and Building Z. The fact that the platform integrates with existing ERP and WMS systems and produces forecasts based on the company's own historical data (a nearly three-year window from 2017 to end of May 2019) meant the project could move quickly from data integration to operational use without disrupting La Redoute's existing infrastructure.

La Redoute's procurement team deployed Flowlity across 20 packaging products (bags and boxes) at two sites, Quai 30 and Building Z. The platform treats both sites as a single storage space while accounting for site-specific characteristics: the storage site each product goes to depends on the space available, and Building Z is dedicated storage while Pier 30 also hosts the packaging line. From these data, Flowlity's algorithms generated consumption forecasts, safety stock recommendations, and supply recommendations for suppliers, drawing on nearly three years of historical orders and past stocks (2017 to end of May 2019). After six months of use, La Redoute's teams measured a 50% reduction in inventory, and Flowlity became the daily replenishment management tool. The combination of cross-site planning and AI-driven safety stock recommendations is what enabled the inventory drop, because each site no longer needed to carry its own full defensive buffer.

After six months of using Flowlity, La Redoute measured between €37K and €78K of annual cost reduction directly tied to the packaging optimization project. The teams also noted 238 pallets freed per month, which translates into reclaimed warehouse capacity that can be redeployed to other inventory categories. Beyond these direct financial impacts, the project delivered better service levels by reducing the risk of shortages, better digitization and automation of replenishments, and better synchronization with suppliers. The €37K–€78K range provides a tangible benchmark for what a focused pilot on 20 packaging references at two sites can deliver in annual savings, with additional value generated through the freed warehouse space and the operational improvements documented above.

Flowlity considers Quai 30 and Building Z as a single virtual storage space while accounting for the operational differences between them. Storage allocation between the two sites depends on the space available at each: products are stored where there is room, and then transported to the packaging line at Pier 30 (which is both storage and packaging area) for use in preparing customer packages. Building Z is dedicated storage only. The solution analyses consumption, constraints, and stock levels across both sites, drawing on nearly three years of historical data (2017 to end of May 2019). Once integrated with La Redoute's existing ERP and WMS systems, Flowlity retrieves order and stock history continuously, then produces consumption forecasts, safety stock recommendations, and supply recommendations for the 20 packaging references in scope. This cross-site logic is what enables the 50% inventory reduction: by treating the network as one space, one site can compensate for the other, which reduces the duplicated safety stock that strictly site-by-site planning would require.

La Redoute's project followed Flowlity's standard four-phase implementation: on Day 1, project scope was defined and historical data was loaded to train the algorithms. After two months, the data integration from La Redoute's existing ERP and WMS systems was complete. At three months, the procurement team had access to the application, received AI-generated recommendations, and was sharing planning and feedback with the Flowlity team. After six months, Flowlity was implemented and used daily by the procurement team. This phased approach (data, then test, then daily production) is how the project moved from kickoff to daily operational use within six months, while allowing the team to validate AI recommendations against their own planning intuition during the testing phase. The 50% inventory reduction and the €37K–€78K annual cost saving were measured at the end of this six-month rollout.

To further optimize inventory management and supply chain integration, Flowlity opened a supplier portal that gives La Redoute's packaging suppliers direct access to forecasts and requirements. As a trusted third party, Flowlity aggregates supplier data to increase visibility, with two objectives: improve La Redoute's own forecasts, and let each supplier benefit from the solution by receiving greater transparency on future orders. This bilateral visibility changes the relationship from transactional ordering to collaborative planning: La Redoute gets better forecasts because suppliers' inputs feed into the model, and suppliers get earlier visibility on what La Redoute will need so they can plan production, capacity, and shipments accordingly. The portal is the mechanism behind the better synchronization with suppliers result documented after six months of use, and it complements the 50% inventory reduction by reducing supply-side variability in addition to demand-side variability.