100 Sales to 10,000: Can Your Supply Chain Keep Up?

A single TikTok video in Poland can take a beauty product from 100 sales a day to 10,000. No forecast can see that coming, so the supply chain has to be built to respond.

Rad Jha (Flaconi), who oversees supply chain for more than 50,000 products from over 1,000 brands across 12-plus European markets, joins Lavina Suthenthiran on this week’s Global Lens to discuss how beauty retailers can handle viral demand, and what that takes market by market.

INSIDE THE EPISODE:

Build for response, not prediction

Small luxuries like beauty keep selling when budgets tighten, and social media makes demand swing fast. Rather than chasing a perfect forecast, Flaconi focuses on sensing spikes quickly and working with suppliers that can scale with it. That approach cut its out-of-stock rate from 15 - 20% down to 2 - 3%.

Purchase history predicts supplier problems

Years of weekly purchase orders reveal patterns most retailers never look for. A brand might struggle to deliver every October, for example, because of a recurring glass shortage for perfume bottles. Spotting those patterns lets retailers order ahead and stock up before the disruption hits.

Supply chain as a growth driver

Costs can only be cut so far, while growth has no ceiling. In one market, Flaconi’s cheapest delivery partner was holding back growth, and switching to a slightly more expensive one brought customers back. Automation follows the same logic: fix people and processes first, because automating a messy process only makes it messier.

Listen above to hear why trust, with shoppers, suppliers, and teams, is the foundation of a supply chain built for the unexpected.