Inside U Saves 20 Hours a Week With Inventory Planner

“Inventory Planner is so good that I almost don’t want to tell other people about it in case they get it too and it ruins our competitive advantage!”

– Steve Velthove, Founder and COO, Inside U

Finding the perfect tech stack for your business can take time – but when it happens, it’s a game changer.

That’s certainly been the case for Ontario-based wellness brand, Inside U.

The online and in-store retailer, founded in 2009, has combined the power of Shopify and Inventory Planner to turbocharge its growth, enabling the business to achieve $3M annual revenue, grow 30% YoY and expand its product range.

A bitter pill to swallow

However, first the business had to part ways with its previous tool (which has now been discontinued).

Inside U’s founder and COO, Steve Velthove, says: “StitchLabs just wasn’t working for us – it didn’t have the functionality to allow me to offload responsibility and it required so much manual input.

“When we switched to Inventory Planner, I could finally start to grow the business rather than spending all my time micromanaging and fire-fighting.

“Inventory Planner gives you everything you need to scale successfully. It’s a beautiful database, with advanced search functions and filters which make it stand out from the crowd. I really love it.”

As a top-rated inventory planning app on Shopify, Inventory Planner reveals which inventory to order, how much to order, and the perfect moment to order it, based on an accurate calculation of how much you will sell that factors in supplier timescales, seasonality and promotions alongside historical sales data.

It’s packed with functionality that’s designed for modern e-commerce brands, including enabling the creation of POs directly from buying recommendations and proactive flagging of slow-moving and hot-selling items – helping merchants avoid overstock and stockouts that hit cash flow.

One of the major benefits for Inside U has been the time savings Inventory Planner has brought about. The business now saves around 20 hours every week – or 80 hours a month – by drastically reducing the time needed to purchase inventory.

“We save time thanks to the easy-to-understand insights on PO processes and replenishment reports. Each PO probably takes us 10 fewer minutes than before, which really adds up,” Steve adds.

“I love that it stops us forgetting to complete orders and that it pops up with intuitive notifications that prevent us from making mistakes. For instance, if we try to order an item that’s out of stock in one warehouse, but in stock in another warehouse, a box will pop up to say ‘hey, did you know you already have ‘x’ number of these in ‘x’ location?’.

“Plus, as someone who spends 60% of their time on purchasing, I love that I can hover over each location in our Inventory Planner dashboard to see sales and key data. Plus, it’s easy to combine warehouses and create POs directly from the app. That’s awesome functionality!

“We also really like that it integrates so seamlessly with Shopify and Xero – our accountants appreciate the reports it can create, too. Being able to share data between the apps in our tech stack really makes a difference.”

Fighting fit

As consumer demand remains unpredictable and an economic downturn takes hold, Inventory Planner enables brands like Inside U to grow without adding overheads.

Despite being a multimillion dollar brand with multiple stories, Inside U has been able to scale 30% year-on-year in a controlled, stress-free way, with a team of just seven people – and it’s all thanks to the cutting-edge functionality of the app.

“Inventory Planner is so good that I almost don’t want to tell other people about it in case they get it too and it ruins our competitive advantage!” says Steve.

“It’s been critical to our expansion and our success.

“It can be so hard to decide on which tech to use within your business, but getting Inventory Planner is an easy decision that quickly pays off. Along with Shopify, Inventory Planner has become a technology that I simply wouldn’t be without.”

Unlike clunky spreadsheets, Inventory Planner offers always-up-to-date forecasting and customizable inventory insights, along with easy-to-understand buying recommendations.

For brands like Inside U, it offers a vital and exciting alternative to solutions like spreadsheets, which are now widely considered unfit for purpose when it comes to inventory planning – namely because they can’t factor in rapid, real-world changes, especially as a business scales, and are almost always out-of-date and inaccurate.

Steve says: “I struggle to understand why some retail brands, many bigger than us, still use spreadsheets – it’s ridiculous.

“Spreadsheets require way more time, tie up more of your money in inventory and limit your business – if you’re using spreadsheets, you’re more likely to limit yourself to 500 SKUs rather than going all in on the 5,000 you need to grow.

“It just doesn’t make sense.”

“It can be so hard to decide on which tech to use within your business, but getting Inventory Planner is an easy decision that quickly pays off. Along with Shopify, Inventory Planner has become a technology that I simply wouldn’t be without.”

– Steve Velthove, Founder and COO, Inside U

After a busy few years of growth, there are no plans to slow down at Inside U. The brand is hyper-focussed on its goal of making natural products available and affordable to all and is exploring new revenue streams, such as subscription packages.

Steve adds: “I’m 40 this year and I don’t have much gray hair, and I credit Inventory Planner with that, too! As a business founder, you have to be able to have time to yourself and to be able to sleep at night and I can tick both of those boxes thanks to Inventory Planner.”

Want to see how Inventory Planner can boost your business? Book a demo now.