Mainebiz

V O L . X X I N O. V M A R C H 9 , 2 0 1 5 20 W hen Bull Moose's computerized ordering system bought hundreds of copies of Walt Disney's "Hocus Pocus," Chad Verrill, the music chain's director of operations, was sur- prised. He thought the retailer's customers preferred real horror movies at Halloween. But the computer figured out what store employees didn't: that each October for the last several years, hun- dreds of copies of "Hocus Pocus," the Disney film starring Bette Midler, flew off the shelves. "e system can overcome our human biases," says Verrill. "If movies or music were out or more years ago, we might not carry them, but with our special order system at the point of sale, if a couple people order it, the system will bring it back. Otherwise we'd overlook it." He figures that rather than not having the movie in stock, the store made a to profit for every copy of "Hocus Pocus" sold. at might not sound like a lot. "But when you only make off some- thing that costs us , we don't want to have extra items," he says. "It's called 'lean retail.'" Bull Moose's founder and President Brett Wickard, a self-described math geek, embraced the concept of lean manufacturing early in the company's history. Using statistics that projected future orders based on past consumer purchases, he wrote software that assured the Bull Moose stores never ran out of inventory and didn't order items people weren't buy- ing. at software and services supporting it evolved into his new company, FieldStack LLC, which he founded in in the same former firehouse as Bull Moose's Portland headquarters. FieldStack, at which he also is president, is now selling the lean retail soft- ware and services to other retailers, including the Pet Life pet stores. Bull Moose also is a customer, and a test site for new software features. Wickard says the current product's development started more than a decade ago at Bull Moose. He knew he had something special when someone visited him from what he describes as the biggest distributor in the music business. "He said, 'you have a secret,' because of Bull Moose's inventory metrics," says Wickard. "All of their customers had a [product] return average of to , but Bull Moose was in the low single digits," Wickard says. "We were never out of things and our inventory coverage percentage was much higher. He wanted us to share our secret with the rest of [his] customers." Wickard admits Bull Moose did have a secret. "We were looking at the data in a different way," says Wickard, who majored in chemistry at Bowdoin College. "We are using the people who sell us used goods to infer demand for new goods, that is, we look at whether they sold something back soon after they bought it. We've wired math into our ordering process." P H O T O / T I M G R E E N WAY F O C U S FieldStack LLC 17 Arbor St., Portland Founded: 2013 Founder/president: Brett Wickard Business: Lean retail software/services Employees: 20 full-time Revenues (2014): $2 million to $5 million Contact: 207-210-6000 hello@fieldstack.com L E A N RETAIL In his new company, Bull Moose founder and President Brett Wickard uses statistics to infer customers' future buying patterns Chad Verrill, director of operations for Bull Moose, says FieldStack's system has agged sales of hot products that humans might have overlooked.

• Cover