The women's hiking brand replaced its pivot-table forecasts with Lumina - planning online and show sales, sizes and stock in one place, so its founder can stay one step ahead without a bigger team.
Apparel
Women's outdoor & hiking clothing
D2C & Events
Shopify, plus shows and Christmas markets
End-to-end
Demand forecasting, budgets, size curves, replenishment, purchasing
Spreadsheets
Pivot-table forecasts on Shopify exports
My Urban Trail makes hiking clothes that help women feel comfortable and confident on the trails, from thermal leggings in petite, long and tall lengths to soft-shell coats. Founder Laura Kaciubskyj left a high-pressure fashion career to start the brand after falling for the outdoors in lockdown. Today it sells online and at shows across the UK, where customers who discover it at a Christmas market come back for their second, third and fifth pair.
As an ex-merchandiser, Laura knew exactly how planning should work - and how quickly it gets messy. Every forecast started with an export of every sale, pivoted by week, channel and product, then rolled into a top-line plan by hand. Every new size, length and launch made the spreadsheet bigger, and peak trading, shows and factory lead times all landed at once.
Laura chose Lumina because it gave her the planning tools of a much bigger brand, without the cost or the bloat. Connected live to Shopify, it rebuilt her planning logic as a system: a top-line budget she sets as growth on last year, broken down by category, channel and week, with a bottom-up forecast underneath that she can override at any level.
Online and show sales are forecast separately, then split down to every size and length using recent size curves. Reorder quantities are planned net of returns, so a style with a high return rate isn't over-bought, and new launches are forecast from similar products until they build their own history.
“Oh, that's so handy - for Chatsworth, just knowing quantities to order and the breakdown by size, and the true potential online versus show.” - Laura Kaciubskyj, Founder
Because Lumina is built on a flexible platform, the system keeps evolving with My Urban Trail.
Laura now plans from one live system instead of rebuilding her spreadsheet each week. Shopify sales flow straight in, the budget and the forecast sit side by side, and the exception reports show what needs ordering, down to the size. When she plans a new style, she takes the sales mix of a similar one and applies it to her top-line quantity.
That's freed her to focus on growth. When sales doubled as autumn trading kicked in, the plan was already there - and ahead of Chinese New Year, Lumina is being set up to plan each supplier's shutdown and lift orders to minimums without over-buying the sizes already in stock.
The approach reflects how Lumina works with growing brands: start from how the team already plans, connect the data, and keep building as the business adds products, channels and markets.