“More so than ever, even on upcoming products, we listen to our customers to find out what they want and how we can improve the overall experience,” Cleaver says. Simple things like putting the light on the front of the device allows for an improved experience during long reading sessions. With each new iteration of its e-readers, Kobo strives for a design that lowers the barriers to entry and creates a pure reading experience. “A lot of attention goes into the planning and production of our devices to ensure they are easy to use.” “We’re competing against something that’s been around for hundreds of years and is very successful,” Cleaver says. The company considers traditional books its competition as much as it does rival e-readers. Where companies such as Amazon want to draw customers into its ecosystem, Kobo is about giving avid readers a dedicated experience. Every e-reader company uses the same screens, plastics and components so Kobo differentiates itself from the Kindles and iPads of the world through its software. “We’re the e-reading company purely for readers,” Cleaver boasts.ĭevice hardware is commoditized to an extent. Although the company is centered on e-books, its e-reader devices make up the physical side of the supply chain. The company offers more than 4.7 million e-books across 97 languages and 190 countries. The Toronto-based company was founded in 2009 and is a subsidiary of the Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten. But since implementing a more balanced supply-focused approach, Kobo’s forecast accuracy is typically between 90 and 95 percent, close enough that it can create efficiencies throughout the rest of the company. Making a fundamental change to how product forecasts were devised took trust from Kobo’s sales team and the rest of the organization, Cleaver says, and he had to convince others the process was flexible enough to allow Kobo to increase the supply of e-readers if a device took off. “We rely heavily on Kobo’s historical sales data and how our product is selling in the market,” he explains. So Cleaver and his team developed their own demand forecasts. Most companies guard those sales carefully, meaning there is little available data on industry trends or sales figures for comparable devices. E-commerce has allowed manufacturers to skip the traditional brick-and-mortar retailers and now more than 70 percent of all e-readers are sold directly to consumers. Being able to more accurately estimate how many devices would sell would allow Kobo to streamline its supply chain and lessen its inventory, making the company more flexible and capable to react to new market trends.īut there was an inherent challenge in the e-reader market. three years ago, he wanted the e-reader and e-book company to approach its sales predictions from the supply chain side. But when Scott Cleaver joined Rakuten Kobo Inc. At most entrepreneurial companies, the sales team is responsible for forecasting sales.

Kobo inc. parent organization