Paper Republic Improves Production Planning by 60% with Katana

Company Profile

Started in 2013, Paper Republic manufacture their own leather journals and accessories. As every entrepreneur was working on developing apps, founder Jérôme Bacquias decided to take a more traditional approach and invested in paper.

“I created paper republic six years ago, and to be honest, I’m not sure if at that time I had a very clear idea of what I was doing. I had just quit my job and was about to become a father. I had no experience whatsoever with paper or leather. Everyone was creating apps and I was betting on paper. Companies were outsourcing to China and I was committed to producing in Europe. The only thing I knew is that I wanted my freedom back: the freedom do things that I thought were right, to be accountable for my successes and failures, and to find a meaning in what I was doing.” says Jérôme.

The company stands for stunning vegetable-tanned, full-grain soft cow leather. The leather is bought directly from family-run tanneries in Italy, which only natural, non-chemical extracts. This ancestral tanning is a slow and artisanal process: it takes on average two months to tan and dye a cow hide. The vegetable-tanning means that the color and texture of the leather have a natural look and develop a unique patina overt time.

The writing paper used in Paper Republic notebooks is made in a Swedish paper mill. It is acid-free, wood-free FSC-certified 80 gsm natural paper with a cream color and a soft touch.

Challenges

The three major challenges Paper Republic identified were:

1. Planning production and getting a real-time overview of inventory,

2. Large orders jeopardizing smaller orders, and 

3. Stock synchronization with Shopify.

He said that one of their main struggles was the inability to plan the right amount of necessary raw materials.

“We manufacture most of our products and have a complex supply chain. Yet, most third-party inventory management tools out there are made for resellers, not for makers. We need to source raw materials, plan production, put components together and know our real-time inventory across the entire production process.” says Jérôme.

Objectives

Paper Republic quickly identified that they needed to get more control over their business, by:

1. Optimizing production planning and having real-time status of finished goods and raw materials,
2. Differentiating between make-to-order and make-to-stock to avoid large orders taking over smaller orders, and

Implementing an inventory management tool that seamlessly integrates with Shopify and is easy-to-use.

How Katana Helped

1. Improve production planning by 60%, through segmenting the production process for each SKU, setting up manufacturing steps, and allocating resources and raw materials to each product and sub-component,
2. Produce personalized products on order or assign large orders as “make-to-order”, thanks to being able to differentiate between batch and bespoke products, and
3. Improve inventory accuracy by 29% and gain a complete overview of business operations through stock sync with Shopify.