7thonline Founder and CEO, Max Ma joined Clint Betts on the CEO Podcast to discuss leadership, AI in retail, the latest economic outlook and—of course—tariff strategies. Read along as he discloses his secret strategy to growth, or listen in as the pair share their thoughts and insights here: 7thonline CEO Max Ma.
Building and Growing an Inventory System: 7thonline’s Journey
Before 7thonline, I was working in the retail industry on the IT side of the business. I realized there were a lot of inefficiencies—the inventory problems everyone experienced (on both the supply chain and demand sides). That led to the start of 7thonline in 1999, to help retailers improve their inventory decisions.
We have evolved quite a bit: from a 800 sq ft office to offices globally, some of the most reputable retail brands signing on, expanding our product from a small part of supply chain planning to now covering the full spectrum of multi-channel inventory planning and production decisions, and more.
Leadership, Talent and Customer Success
My secret leadership strategy? Hiring top talent and making sure every person on the team feels like a leader.
It starts from recruiting the best and the brightest from the industry—on the retail side and the tech side. Over the years, we’ve worked very hard to attract, recruit and retain our core team members. Everybody is talking about AI (talent), some of our team members have been leading AI practices for global consultancy firms for over 25 years.
After 26 years, I’m still really enthusiastic about the business because I enjoy what I do. Every day, we use the latest and greatest technology to help the industry. We look at each customer case to figure out how to deliver value and really help them improve their supply chain decision making processes.
AI is in our DNA
We embed all AI capabilities around the supply chain processes. For long-range planning, we have AI to help our customers forecast up to 5 years out. For allocation, we have AI size capabilities to deliver the most appropriate size profile for each retail location.
When most people talk about AI, they typically talk about large language models. This is just one of the many AI methodologies. We have that (in our CoPlanner) but we have also deployed all kinds of AI into our product modules—different business cases may require different AI capabilities and algorithms. The current AI drive has made AI more visible and legitimate, which is great for us; we’ve been aggressively and iteratively developing AI capabilities over the past 25 years.
For example, one of the biggest challenges in retail is Excel. Excel has a few problems, everyone has their own versions, formulas are error-prone and it doesn’t give the organization a unified view. First you have to think about how to move to a systematic approach, versus a disconnected one with data silos. But with AI, they can transition to an information highway.
Outlook for the Rest of 2025
I believe technology will be an important truth for businesses to weather the storm. We help people be smarter with their trade decisions, mitigating risk. Because of the potential tariff impact, people have to reduce their risk by lowering unproductive inventory.
To learn more about 7thonline’s capabilities, email us at info@7thonline.com or book a demo.
