Elfa Case Study

Founded in 1948, Elfa is a Nordic leader in designing and manufacturing customizable storage systems and made-to-measure sliding doors, with production across three sites (two in Sweden, one in Poland) and ownership under The Container Store group. In 2024, Elfa had 331 employees across the world and a turnover of 987M SEK.

Their largest markets are the Nordics and North America, with strong brand recognition in the US, and significant growth potential across continental Europe - especially Germany, Poland, and France.

Elfa’s procurement organization had grown through acquisitions and was managing 1,200+ suppliers with a patchwork of Excel sheets, SharePoint folders, and an ERP purchasing module (Infor M3) that couldn’t deliver the SRM capabilities they needed. That meant limited visibility, manual data collection, inconsistent processes across sites, and too much subjectivity in supplier evaluations.

At the same time, Elfa wanted to consolidate and professionalize its supplier base, standardize assessments, and get a 360° view that combined performance, risk, and sustainability - without losing the flexibility to weight criteria for context (e.g., country risk vs. demonstrated performance).

Elfa adopted Kodiak Hub as its end-to-end SRM suite to centralize supplier information and drive consistent, data-driven collaboration with suppliers.

• Standardized assessments & performance evaluations to move away from subjective judgments and toward comparable, weighted ratings across quality, delivery, commercial, sustainability, and collaboration.

• On-site audits integrated with action tracking to capture evidence, quantify findings, and close the loop with corrective and preventive actions.

• Consolidated supplier base & better segmentation to strengthen negotiation position and focus volume on the right partners—supported by Kodiak’s supplier properties and category structures.

Elfa chose Kodiak Hub specifically for its flexibility (tailored self-assessments), integrated third-party data, and the ability to weight ratings—capabilities that made the system fit Elfa’s complex categories and geographies.

Claims down, costs avoided: Supplier claims fell from 322 to 134. Kristian estimates 160 of those avoided claims are attributable to Kodiak Hub and at 3000 SEK a piece, that's 480 000 SEK of savings tied directly to the platform.

Supplier quality up: Quality improved from 82% to 98.1% (20% relative lift), with Kodiak Hub as the largest factor enabling proactive, preventive work instead of reactive “firefighting”.

Faster qualification: For a documentation-heavy glass & mirror supplier, Elfa reduced qualification time from 24 months to 8 months = 3X acceleration.

Supplier development impact: A Kodiak Hub-driven audit and action plan helped one supplier improve production output by 30%, letting Elfa meet demand without sourcing a new supplier.

Operational maturity: Annual audits increased from 2–3 to 5, now with higher data quality and executive-level visibility.

Strategic consolidation: Elfa reduced its overall supplier base from 432 to 122, including a packaging category consolidation from 16 suppliers to 5, strengthening negotiation leverage and value focus.