The UK’s leading supplier of kids’ activity packs replaced spreadsheets with a tailored AI-powered planning system - saving hours each week, reducing firefighting, and building forward visibility across demand, supply, and purchasing.
Consumer Goods
Children’s activity products & packaging
B2B
Hospitality & retail
Demand & Supply Planning
Demand, product lifecycle, inventory, replenishment, reporting
Spreadsheets
Excel, Access database, Sage 50
Craftis is the UK's leading provider of kids' activity packs for restaurants, hotels, airlines, and leisure venues. Based in Towcester, they've grown rapidly by offering practical, family-friendly products - but behind the scenes, that growth was outpacing their planning tools.
The Craftis team were juggling demand and supply planning using a patchwork of spreadsheets, an ageing Access database, and manual workarounds. As the product range grew and operations became more complex - with long lead times from Asia and increasingly bespoke lines - their existing setup was holding them back.
They explored ERPs and demand planning tools from major vendors, but nothing fit. Most were too rigid, too generic, or too complex for a nimble business like Craftis. What they needed was a system that mirrored how they actually work - and helped them plan better, faster, and with more confidence.
Working with Lumina as a design partner, Craftis shaped a demand and supply planning system tailored to their needs. The collaboration was fast, hands-on, and iterative.
Neil Marchant of MET Supply Chain Consulting - Craftis' supply chain advisor - and CEO Michael Halpin worked closely with Lumina to scope and refine the system week by week, ensuring it fit the real-world needs of a fast-moving team.
Instead of a rigid software rollout, it was a joint build - combining Lumina's tech & AI expertise with Craftis' deep operational know-how.
Thanks to Lumina's flexible toolset, the team now have a platform they can continue to evolve as Craftis scales - expanding into new sectors, signing major brands, and bringing their family-friendly offering to more markets than ever before.
Since rolling out Lumina, Craftis has seen a step change in how they plan and operate. The team now has visibility of vendor lead times and upcoming demand, enabling them to plan ahead with confidence - rather than scrambling to fulfil orders at the last minute.
Manual data stitching is gone. With automated forecasting, PO tracking, and dynamic demand views, Craftis can make faster, more accurate decisions across the board. The planning team is no longer bogged down in spreadsheets, and the design team finally has forward visibility to stay ahead of bespoke customer briefs.
You've implemented a system that's pretty much halved the time it was taking previously – and that is invaluable. It makes it easy to do your job, and the kind of visibility we now have into our stock, demand, and product range lets us plan our way to cover items very, very quickly and easily.
The journey was collaborative and iterative - starting with a working demand plan dashboard in just a couple of weeks, and evolving into a fully tailored planning system over time. That approach reflects Lumina's core philosophy: to grow alongside ambitious businesses, adapting with them as they scale and establish themselves as major brands.