We’ve embedded Madden into how we plan and issue POs, which has cut down the back and forth considerably and made us faster and more deliberate about where we put our capital.
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Michelle Lin, Chief Financial Officer at Pepper
Pepper, the US-based direct-to-consumer brand reinventing bras for small-chested women, uses Madden to power demand forecasting, purchasing, and inventory planning across its direct and marketplace channels.
Pepper was founded in 2017 by Jaclyn Fu and Lia Winograd, around a problem they knew firsthand: if you wear a small cup size, finding a bra that actually fits is close to impossible. The Kickstarter that launched the brand was 470% funded, and the conviction behind it has not changed since, that small-chested bodies deserve better fit, representation, and celebration. Pepper has grown well beyond bras into swimwear, loungewear, and everyday essentials.
That expansion comes with a planning problem that is easy to underestimate. Every style multiplies out across a wide range of band-and-cup combinations and colorways, new drops land continuously, and demand is spread across direct-to-consumer, Amazon, and marketplace partners, each with its own lead times and replenishment rhythm. Planning at that level of detail, while keeping bestsellers available without tying up cash in the wrong inventory, is where spreadsheets stop scaling.
As Michelle Lin, Chief Financial Officer at Pepper, puts it: “Inventory is one of the largest assets on our balance sheet, so visibility into how it’s trending matters. Madden gives us that in real time and makes it easy to quickly share insights across production, merchandising, and finance. We’ve embedded it into how we plan and issue POs, which has cut down the back and forth considerably and made us faster and more deliberate about where we put our capital.”
Pepper now runs their end-to-end procurement process in Madden. Shopify, Amazon, and its supply-chain platform feed a single planning environment, where the team sets top-down budgets, builds bottom-up sales plans by style, and turns those plans into purchase orders. Inventory health, stock coverage, and replenishment needs are visible per SKU and per channel, and scheduled AI analyses surface what needs attention on their own: how a new launch is tracking against comparable past launches, which top sellers are trending toward a stockout, and where stock is building up faster than it is selling. That breadth is deliberate. Rather than sitting with a single planner, Madden is used day to day across finance, planning, merchandising, and production.
Purchasing is where that shows up most directly. Placing a round of purchase orders used to mean rebuilding the same order by hand across a vendor template and the supply-chain system, hours of work at a time, and days when a full season’s buy ran to many orders. In Madden the buy is built once and committed straight through to Sage Supply Chain Intelligence, formerly Anvyl, in minutes.
Axel Bukowski, Co-Founder & CEO of Madden, says: “Brands like Pepper are among the hardest to plan well. The assortment is deep, the size curve is unforgiving, and a single buying decision commits real cash months ahead of the demand it is meant to serve. What we want to give a team like theirs is not another dashboard to go and check, but a system that does the analysis itself and tells them what matters this week. Pepper has pushed us on exactly that, and the product is better for it.”
About Pepper
Pepper is a US-based direct-to-consumer brand founded in 2017 with the mission to celebrate and support small-chested women through better-fitting, confidence-boosting apparel. Designed specifically for AA–B cup sizes, its assortment spans bras, swimwear, loungewear, and wardrobe essentials, built on an innovative sizing philosophy and a deep understanding of an underserved customer segment. Pepper continues to expand its product range and community while championing inclusivity, representation, and thoughtful design.
About Madden
Madden provides an AI/ML inventory planning platform for retail brands and retailers, helping teams forecast demand, plan purchases, manage assortments, and optimize stock levels across all channels. Designed for fast-growing companies as well as enterprise operations, Madden enables smarter decision-making through automated workflows, actionable analytics, and seamless integrations with leading ERP, WMS, and e-commerce systems.
