Varusteleka Cuts Planning Time by 70% with Prediko

About Varusteleka

Varusteleka is a military and outdoor gear retailer and brand known for its wide selection of tactical equipment, military surplus, clothing, and accessories. It serves customers around the world from its online store and physical shop in Helsinki. 

Established in 2003, it has grown into one of the largest military surplus and tactical gear stores in Europe, with products trusted by professional soldiers, law enforcement officers, reservists, and outdoor enthusiasts. 

Challenge: Complex supply planning across long lead times and in-house production

Varusteleka sells a variety of products, for which supplier lead times can be as long as six months. Combined with large minimum order quantities, this meant purchasing decisions had to be made far in advance, often without clear visibility into the right ordering window.

In the earlier system, planning and forecasting were difficult to manage and time-consuming. The team lacked a clear, reliable way to translate demand into long-range purchasing decisions. 

Elina Häme, Director of Procurement and Product Design at Varusteleka, said, “In the old system, the purchasing was quite sophisticated already, but the planning was quite complex.”

Raw material planning for Varusteleka’s own production added another layer of complexity. It was handled separately in Excel, making it hard to maintain consistency between finished goods forecasts and material requirements.

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Why Varusteleka chose Prediko

Varusteleka began actively looking for new inventory planning software when it migrated its ecommerce operations to Shopify. The move created an opportunity to reconsider whether its existing local planning system still made sense.

Rather than integrating the legacy system with Shopify, Varusteleka chose to replace it entirely.

Prediko emerged as the best fit during the evaluation for its ability to handle both finished goods and raw materials in a single planning workflow, as well as for the clarity of its demand planning logic.

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Solution: Long-range supply planning integrated with raw materials

Soon after onboarding, Prediko became the main platform Varusteleka uses for demand forecasting, supply planning, purchasing, and raw material planning.

Here’s where the impact is most visible.

1. Year-long visibility into demand, supply, and purchasing needs

Prediko’s supply planning interface gives Varusteleka a clear view of confirmed deliveries, planned demand, and remaining purchasing needs across the entire year. This is critical given long lead times and own production. As Häme shared:

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The team can also see the purchasing budget requirements for the year, helping them understand the financial impact of the plan.

Reflecting on the time spent on demand planning, Elina said, “We use like 30 percent of the time we used before for making the plan and interpreting the plan and sending the plan to our suppliers… so I would say 70% of the time we used is gone.”

2. Clear ordering timelines for long lead times

With longer supplier lead times, knowing when to place orders is as important as knowing what to order. Prediko makes reorder timing clear.

“The delivery times can be half a year… but now we can see it immediately from Prediko;  okay, now you need to order in June to be able to fulfill the plan.” 

This replaced manual estimation and guesswork with a more structured planning process.

3. Integrated raw material planning alongside finished goods

Raw material planning for Varusteleka’s own production is now handled directly in Prediko, instead of separately in Excel. 

Elina highlighted, “I like the beauty of the system, how simply it has been implemented.”

Prediko keeps material requirements aligned with finished goods in one system, generating raw material purchase recommendations based on BOMs and finished goods demand.

‍4. Faster, clearer daily decision-making

The Varusteleka team uses Prediko’s stock health views and recommendations daily. Compared to the previous system, the logic behind recommendations is easier to understand and verify. 

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This increased clarity has improved trust in the numbers and reduced the time spent validating decisions.

5. Flexible workflows and reporting for suppliers

Varusteleka uses Prediko reports extensively, including automatically sharing reports with suppliers instead of issuing purchase orders.

“We even send them automatically to some of our suppliers, because with some of the suppliers, we use Vendor Managed Inventory.”

The team has also adapted Prediko creatively to support unique workflows like supplier types (own factories vs. brands), enabled by the system’s ease of use.

6. Easy adoption across teams

Today, Prediko is used daily by approximately six to seven people across purchasing and planning teams. Despite limited formal training, onboarding for Varusteleka was fast due to the system’s logical structure.

As Elina explained, “ I can easily understand the logic. Pretty fast, I was able to train my people how to use it really quickly.”

Every supply chain operates under different constraints, but clarity in planning makes a huge difference. 

Prediko helps teams bring demand, supply, and raw material planning into one place. Try the app free for 14 days and declutter your inventory workflows.