Meet our founders Petter Flordal and Axel Bukowski

Madden Analytics was founded in 2020 to help brands plan, buy and follow up on inventory to be more aligned with their demand. Using advanced data analytics and Madden’s powerful forecasting models, they can reduce overproduction and undersupply. Since then, we’ve had the pleasure of working with brands like Flattered, Eytys, Care of Carl, Gant, Our Legacy, and many more. But how did it all come about? What seed planted the solution that is today? Why is Madden Analytics?

This week we sat down with our founders, Axel and Petter, to find out. 

What’s your story?

Well, from our LinkedIn profiles you might surmise that we met a decade ago while both working at BCG. However, the story of Madden Analytics started much later, at a wedding. Short story short, a mutual friend let it be known that we were itching to solve some of the same problems and put us in contact again. ‍

What were those problems?

We both have a long history working within the consumer goods industry. Petter with large, well-known consumer brands catering to a large global market. Axel within e-commerce companies as well as an entrepreneur with the perspective of smaller D2C brands.

Our respective experiences made it quite clear that the capabilities and know-how that big global brands enjoyed when it came to handling their supply chain and inventory planning was not just a different ballpark but a completely different game to the one small and medium-sized brands were playing. Their access to data science resources and software solutions put them in great control of their demand forecasting and inventory planning. These opportunities were not accessible for a smaller brand.

We wanted to create a software solution giving that same access to data science to smaller companies that the large players had. When we started airing the idea around the industry, there was an immediate confirmation of the market need for a tool like Madden Analytics.

Was it a silver bullet solution from the get-go?

Like with any company, we’ve had numerous stages of exploration of what Madden’s core really was before we ended up with the solution we offer today - an intuitive SaaS tool to forecast sales and inventory. Likewise, Madden’s current product is not what our first users had. We have taken many turns and gone through many iterations since then, based on our customer's usage and needs. We still do. Many of the new features we develop start as requests from our current users.

Why is a solution like Madden Analytics relevant today?

The commerce landscape has changed massively over the past decade. Brands have gone from selling fully through retailers to moving largely into D2C. D2C overall has grown exponentially. This is a great pivot from most brands producing on demand to buying larger quantities on speculation to sell through owned channels.

Moreover, the emergence of ecommerce created a 24h daily sales window and enabled the globalization of most commodity goods to be delivered to your doorstep. With products being accessible to consumers at all times a new precedent for forecasting and inventory coverage has been created for brands to keep up with demand.

Of course, the impact of the pandemic and the following downturn in the economy that we are now experiencing has further demonstrated the importance of keeping proper stock levels. 

Forecasting sales and demand in such a dramatically changing market is no easy task. Support from data science through software helps with accuracy in forecasting and flexibility in inventory planning and purchasing. 

What makes Madden Analytics different?

There are a few similar solutions, but inventory planning is an underdeveloped area of service for small and medium-sized brands where most brands have never used software for it before. The solutions available do vary in their offering. Madden provides advanced powerful analytics and forecasting models with integrations to all relevant platforms and data points. It is built to handle complex architecture and multiple sales channels and it caters to B2B pipelines alongside D2C sales. This way it serves brands that have multiple different platforms and complex business models. It can forecast well in advance for long sales cycles and handle recommendations based on the user's lead times and required stock coverage levels.

We’ve put a lot of effort into making Madden intuitive and user-friendly. The data is clearly visualized in an easily digestible way making it easy to get an overview, analyze and act on recommendations to plan your inventory.

Madden is not just about planning and purchasing. It is a great overall analytics tool that allows you to analyze, plan and follow up continuously all in one place. For most users, there is no need for separate BI solutions. This means Madden is not just for your business controller, it’s a solution to share insights across the organization to learn and take action on buying, marketing as well as logistics efforts. 

We’re very clear that Madden is not meant to be a replacement for your team. We know our users have essential insights about their brand, operations, and customers. The forecasting models and recommendations are set up to work together with the knowledge of the user. Madden is simply putting the power of data analytics in the hands of your team to help make forecasting and inventory planning more accurate, flexible, and reliable.

What can we expect from Madden Analytics in the future?

All the rest. Madden Analytics will be your main tool to handle anything supply chain related. With a product like this, the beauty is that the state is ever-evolving. We’ll keep developing it to meet the demand and needs of the users. Amongst the features launching in the near future we can disclose Wholesale Forecasting for one.

Want to get in touch with Axel or Petter? Drop us a line and they’ll make sure to get in touch.