Formulate

What Formulate does

Formulate is a privately held, Stockholm-headquartered SaaS company founded in 2016 that helps retailers translate basic sales data into improved merchandising decisions. The company operates with a small team of 11-50 employees and targets retail buyers, merchandisers, and category managers, addressing the gap between raw sales reporting and actionable assortment, pricing, and replenishment choices. Its value proposition centers on elevating simple sales inputs into structured merchandising recommendations that support day-to-day buying decisions.

The product likely operates as a data ingestion and analytics layer for retail customers, ingesting point-of-sale or sales-data feeds and surfacing decision support at the SKU, category, or store level. However, the input does not disclose specific proprietary technical components, AI/ML architecture, integration footprint, or a published product module list, so the depth of the platform versus point-solution analytics cannot be verified from the supplied evidence.

Formulate generates revenue through a B2B SaaS subscription model (pricing not disclosed) sold into retail customers, with a go-to-market implied to be direct to merchandising teams given its small employee count and Stockholm roots. Cumulative disclosed funding of approximately $6.05 million across rounds in 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020 (notably a $4.08 million round led by henQ in January 2020) suggests a capital-efficient, early-stage revenue profile and limited large-enterprise footprint disclosures.

Name

Formulate

Legal name

RELEX Solutions

Website

https://formulate.app

Company type

Private

Founded year

2016

Operating status

Operating

Headcount range

11–50 employees

Short description

Formulate is a Stockholm-based SaaS company, founded in 2016, that helps retailers turn basic sales data into better merchandising decisions through analytics-driven decision support, serving retail merchandising teams across small and mid-market accounts.

Ownership category

akta.pro rank

Product category

Retail Merchandising Software

akta.pro primary industry

Category Management & Retail Analytics (MPAAAJAI)

akta.pro secondary industries

Shopper & Retail Insights (In-Store/Path-to-Purchase, Category Insights) (MPAAALAJ), Retail Execution Technology & Services (SFA, Planogram, Image Recognition) (MPAAAJAM)

Keywords

• Retail merchandising software
• Sales data analytics
• Merchandising decision platform
• Retail planning tools
• Retail performance analytics

Headquarters

HQ city

Stockholm

HQ country

Sweden

HQ region

Europe

Offices1 record

Markets served

GTM type

B2B

Offering type

Software

Cost components

Personnel, Technology or R&D, Operations, Marketing or Sales

Revenue model

1. SaaS/Software Platform Subscription: Enterprise SaaS platform with subscription-based recurring revenue model. Customers access the unified promotion planning software through cloud-based deployment. No explicit pricing listed; quotes provided based on business needs.

Pricing tiers

Go-to-market motion1 record

Distribution channels1 record

Marketing channels6 records

Core offering

Formulate helps retailers transform simple sales data into better merchandising decisions. The platform enables retailers to make data-driven merchandising choices without requiring complex data infrastructure, serving as a decision-support layer over existing sales data for retail merchandising operations.

Product overview

RELEX Solutions offers a unified AI-powered retail planning platform that integrates merchandising, demand planning, supply chain, and operations. The core offering includes Promotion Planning Software with configurable AI agents (Promotion Diagnostics, Promotion Strategy, Insights and Reporting, Pricing Strategy) alongside the Unified Merchandising Platform that connects pricing and promotion decisions with demand, assortment, space, and inventory. The platform serves retail, wholesale/distribution, and consumer packaged goods/manufacturing industries with solutions spanning demand planning, demand sensing, assortment planning, planogram optimization, inventory planning, production scheduling, store execution, fresh inventory management, supply chain collaboration, and integrated business planning. The architecture is modular, allowing customers to deploy individual solutions or the full unified platform.

Differentiator

Problem solved

Functional benefit

Products and services

• Formulate Retail Merchandising Decision Platform

Quantifiable outcome

• 15% profit improvement on promoted items
• +3 more outcomes

Named customers2 records

Segments3 records

Ideal customer profiles1 record

Technology focussed Yes

API detail

Has API

No

API docs

API detail

Core technology

AI maturity

App detail

AI capability5 records

Feature8 records

Scale indicators1 record

Recent moves4 records

Expansion highlights3 records

Broad incumbents

• Oracle Retail: Suite of retail planning, merchandising, and analytics applications sold to large retail enterprises. Overlaps with Formulate on category and merchandising decisions but serves a much larger and more complex buyer profile.
• Blue Yonder: Large incumbent supply chain and retail planning platform (formerly JDA) covering merchandising, forecasting, replenishment, and pricing. Operates broadly across the same buyer categories Formulate targets but as part of a much wider portfolio with enterprise-grade deployments.
• Circana: Large retail and consumer insights firm (formerly IRI merged with NPD) offering category management, shopper insights, and merchandising analytics. Adjacent competitor to Formulate on the insights/analytics layer for merchandising decisions, particularly for CPG and retail buyers.
• SAP Integrated Business Planning: Enterprise IBP suite covering sales & operations planning, demand, inventory, and merchandising. Represents the broad-incumbent option retailers evaluate alongside lighter-weight tools like Formulate.

Direct peers

• o9 Solutions: AI-powered integrated planning platform for retail, CPG, and manufacturing covering demand, supply, promotion, and merchandising decisions. Closely comparable to Formulate's sales-data-into-merchandising-decisions value proposition, with a significantly larger customer base and capital base.
• ToolsGroup: Retail and supply chain planning vendor focused on demand sensing, inventory optimization, and replenishment. Comparable in solving sales-data-into-merchandising decisions for retailers, with deeper feature breadth and an established mid-market presence.
• RELEX Solutions: Helsinki-based provider of an AI-driven unified retail planning platform spanning demand, inventory, assortment, pricing and promotion optimization. Direct overlap with Formulate's category management and merchandising analytics positioning, with much greater scale (1,500+ planning specialists).
• SymphonyAI Retail: AI-native retail merchandising, category management, and store operations software. Closely aligned with Formulate's merchandising-decisions focus, with stronger AI agent capabilities and a wider enterprise customer base.

Emerging players

• Inventory Planner: Cloud inventory and demand planning tool aimed at SMB and mid-market retailers and brands. Closely comparable on the 'simple sales data → better buying/merchandising decisions' value proposition for smaller retailers that find enterprise platforms too heavy.
• Leaflet: AI-driven merchandising platform for assortment, space, and pricing decisions at mid-market retailers. Comparable to Formulate in focusing on accessible merchandising analytics, with comparable scale and target segment.

Market position

Strengths4 records

Weaknesses4 records

Competitive moat3 records

Key risks5 records

Key highlights5 records

Customer concentration

• Facebookfacebook.com/formulateab

Revenue estimate

Valuation estimate

Number of profiles

Profiles1 record

Funding overview

Funding rounds4 records

Investors5 records

Funding detail is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

M&A

Investments

M&A and investment is available on the Subscription and Enterprise plan.Contact sales →

Frequently asked questions about Formulate