What is a demand forecast?

A number for each product, at each retailer, for each period: how much you will sell, so you can decide how much to make and buy, and which promotions to sign. A good one models press, promotions, and seasonality instead of averaging them into a trend line. And it is a best current line, not a prophecy: every month it is redrawn against what actually sold.

We already forecast in a spreadsheet.

The desk our method comes from ran on Excel too, so keep the spreadsheet. The weakness is the guessing inside it, and the risk that the whole system lives in one person’s head. We replace the guessing; the result stays in the Excel your team already uses.

We’re not a beauty brand.

The method was built on retail demand, and it transfers. Beauty is where we start because it is where the desk came from. If you sell through retail and no one owns the forecast, write anyway.

Are we too small for this? Too big?

If you sell through retail and no one owns the forecast full-time, the audit fits. The model scales with the catalogue: the same desk serves a founder sizing a first retailer commitment and a commercial team running a multi-retailer P&L.

We’ve been burned by consultants before.

The engagement is structured so nothing rests on faith: a fixed fee quoted up front, fourteen days, and the files stay with you whatever you decide. Judge the model in your hands rather than the promises on this page.

I run ops or commercial, not the whole company.

The desk serves you the same way: a forecast your team runs without retraining, and a profit read on each retailer promotion before it is signed.

Know how much you’ll sell, before you make it.

Antevon does demand forecasting for indie beauty brands that sell through retail. In two weeks, for one fixed fee, we build the forecast for every product at every retailer and hand it to you in Excel, with the decisions priced in pounds.

Book the 2-week audit

Starts with a 20-minute call. The fee is fixed and quoted on it.

Rosehip Night Serum · Boots · units per week

press feature lands wk 31

Why beauty brands run out of the bestseller and overstock everything else

Indie beauty brands grow through the same doors: the brand’s own site and TikTok Shop, Boots or Superdrug, Sephora or Space NK, the US and the EU. No two brands take them in the same order any more; the number of doors only grows.

Revenue arrives faster than infrastructure, and by £10M a brand is often running production, retailer commitments, and promotions off a spreadsheet built for a much smaller company, maintained by whoever has owned it longest. Usually that is the founder.

The spreadsheet fails in a predictable way. Beauty demand is not smooth: one piece of press can triple a hero product’s sales for six weeks, and every retailer orders on its own calendar, in its own pattern, around its own promotions. A sheet that averages last year cannot see any of that coming.

So the same brand ends up over and under at once: sold out of the bestseller in the week that mattered most, holding stock that will not move, and without a defensible answer when a retailer asks for a twelve-month commitment.

None of this is unusual. Demand planning is a full-time profession, and almost no indie brand employs one. Antevon fills that gap without the hire.

Watercolor botanical study: a single stem climbing from tiny closed buds at the bottom, through a small bud and a half-open bud, to one full rose bloom at the top — Growth path

What the audit leaves behind

At the end of the two weeks you receive two files, both in Excel, both yours to keep.

The first is the forecast: a number for each product, at each retailer, for each month ahead, built from your own sales history and the retail calendar, with press spikes and promotions modelled rather than averaged away.

Forecast · units per month

Product	Retailer	Aug	Sep	Oct	Nov
Vitamin C Bright SerumLookfantastic	Lookfantastic	978	1 007	988	1 556*
Rosehip Night SerumBoots	Boots	906	933	915	959
Peony Hand CreamHolland & Barrett	Holland & Barrett	391	643†	395	414
Rose Clay MaskBoots	Boots	515	530	520	545

* gift with purchase, modelled † 3 for 2, modelled

The second is a decision ledger, which translates the forecast into actions with the money attached:

Decision ledger · June book

1Expedite the Lookfantastic reorder, Vitamin C Serumprotects £8.4k rev
2Raise the Q4 Boots buy, Rosehip Night Serumcovers £6.2k demand
3Decline the Holland & Barrett 3 for 2 as proposedavoids £2.1k loss
4Cut the Rose Clay Mask run at Bootsfrees £900 cash

Each line carries its working. This is the one behind line 3:

Production sizing, cash planning and promotion calls are all priced the same way, off the same forecast.

There is no software to adopt and no login to keep paying for. Both files keep working whether or not you ever speak to us again.

Built on the £10M demand desk a founder ran inside a leading beauty group.

That desk produced the numbers a national retail business was run against: forecasts that buyers at the multiples pushed back on, promotions modelled before they were signed, deduction lines pursued until the cash came back. The audit applies the same method to your catalogue.

Who you’ll work with

Ink and watercolor portrait study of Yurii Blazhevych — Yurii Blazhevych on LinkedInTakes your call, runs your forecast.

Ink and watercolor portrait study of Oleksii Kyrylchuk — Oleksii Kyrylchuk on LinkedInBuilds the tools it runs on.

How an audit runs

One fixed fee, set by your catalogue and retailer count, quoted on the first call.

Audit timeline

You bring

a sales export,
the reports your retailers send you,
an hour for our questions.

Imperfect data is normal; cleaning it is part of the work, not a surcharge.

Your exports stay confidential: used only to build your files, shared with no one, deleted on request.

You get back, on day 14

the forecast for every product at every retailer,
the decision ledger priced in pounds,
a working session where we go through the first decisions together.

For brands that want the forecast kept alive there is a monthly desk: every number refreshed each month, the ledger maintained, and each retailer promotion read for profit before you sign it. Scoped to your catalogue and retailer count, never billed by the hour, and entirely optional. A good part of the audit’s value survives without it.

Fair questions

What is a demand forecast?: A number for each product, at each retailer, for each period: how much you will sell, so you can decide how much to make and buy, and which promotions to sign. A good one models press, promotions, and seasonality instead of averaging them into a trend line. And it is a best current line, not a prophecy: every month it is redrawn against what actually sold.
We already forecast in a spreadsheet.: The desk our method comes from ran on Excel too, so keep the spreadsheet. The weakness is the guessing inside it, and the risk that the whole system lives in one person’s head. We replace the guessing; the result stays in the Excel your team already uses.
We’re not a beauty brand.: The method was built on retail demand, and it transfers. Beauty is where we start because it is where the desk came from. If you sell through retail and no one owns the forecast, write anyway.
Are we too small for this? Too big?: If you sell through retail and no one owns the forecast full-time, the audit fits. The model scales with the catalogue: the same desk serves a founder sizing a first retailer commitment and a commercial team running a multi-retailer P&L.
We’ve been burned by consultants before.: The engagement is structured so nothing rests on faith: a fixed fee quoted up front, fourteen days, and the files stay with you whatever you decide. Judge the model in your hands rather than the promises on this page.
I run ops or commercial, not the whole company.: The desk serves you the same way: a forecast your team runs without retraining, and a profit read on each retailer promotion before it is signed.

Two weeks from now, you could know.

Bring a sales export and your retailer list; fourteen days later you have the forecast, the ledger, and your first decisions. Count back from your next production run or press window and the start date sets itself. If one of us has already messaged you, reply there. Otherwise:

Book the 2-week audit

Priced like a desk, not a licence

The audit is one fixed fee, set by your catalogue and retailer count and quoted on the first call. The monthly desk is a retainer scoped the same way. Neither is billed by the hour, because what you are buying is a number you can act on, not our time.

From the desk

Plain-English notes on demand, stock, and the numbers a beauty brand runs on. Useful whether or not you ever hire us.

Read the notes →