Fanatics expects its supply chain reinvention to deliver $65 million in cost takeout, $15 million in markdown avoidance and an 8% revenue lift from improved product availability. Ben Pivar, Senior Vice President and Head of Brands and Supply Chain Technology at Fanatics, laid out the numbers at the o9 Solutions Aim 10x Summit in Chicago in September.

"None of this works if we don't have a good demand plan to start," Pivar told Chief Marketer.

The company markets to a fan base of 100 million consumers. When it drives those shoppers to the right product, the item needs to be in stock. Pivar is blunt about the limits of any planning system.

"You will always have out-of-stocks," he said. "The question is how bad are the out-of-stocks and how much better can you get them? Planning is never 100% accurate. We just want to be a little better."

At a $13 billion business, "a little better" translates to millions of dollars.

Why the Supply Chain Had to Change

The sports world moves fast. Apparel planning does not, with lead times running nine to 24 months, Pivar said. That gap creates inventory risk from unexpected player trades, injuries or a team's surprise success.

Pivar pointed to the Dallas Cowboys trading Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers in 2025 as a cautionary tale.

"When that trade happened, we had 175,000 jerseys sitting in warehouses with his name on the back with the Dallas Cowboys on it. And that wasn't worth very much," Pivar said.

To manage that risk, Fanatics segmented its supply chain into three buckets, keeping roughly a quarter of its inventory flexible:

• 65% carries long lead times and higher risk.
• 10% is made-to-order merchandise printed on demand in "hot markets," such as for Super Bowl winners.
• 25% is blank inventory produced onshore or nearshore that stays unprinted until demand is clear.

Balancing Cost, Demand and Speed

Using the Parsons trade as the template, Fanatics now assesses the risk of each player. It prints a portion of those jerseys upfront and holds another portion as blanks, printed on demand near or inside the U.S. and shipped to the customer within a two-week window.

This structure lets Fanatics wait to see actual demand before committing too much capital, Pivar said.

"It's the trade-off between cost and risk that we're trying to optimize against," he said. "It's trying to figure out the calculus so that we don't end up with a lot of product that has to be marked down, but also don't push the cost model. Because the cost model for long lead time is much less than the nearshore, which is less than our onshore."

Speed matters as much as cost. Fanatics tracks it internally as "time to porch," and on-demand printing for newly traded players feeds directly into that metric.

"Our goal is to be faster than our competition," Pivar said. "If we can announce that ours are two weeks before somebody else, that's a benefit for us."

The Numbers Are Starting to Show

Demand planning is the first chapter of Fanatics' 2025–2030 supply chain reinvention, built on o9's technology. The company set its targets at the project's onset in 2025. Its core demand forecasting is now live with key accounts and is already producing its target results.

Within the first quarter after going live, Fanatics improved its in-stock rate and generated $5 million in additional sales — products sold that would otherwise have been out of stock. For the typical shopper, that means more of what they want is in stock and ships faster.

"Consumers want their product when they want it," Pivar said. "If we get the product when they want it and we do a better job than other people, then we're winning. Planning is the key to that."

With the Parsons episode as proof of what long lead times can cost, Fanatics' next five years hinge on whether its forecasting can keep the blanks flexible and the warehouses clear of dead jerseys.