Life Before an Inventory Management system

This is a story of a brand who invested in an effective inventory management tool that returned them $100k overnight

Today I am thrilled to be able to share with you a recent discussion I had with Zach Silverman, Director of Operations at JustBrand Limited – a Philadelphia-based company leading the pack in temperature-controlled apparel and accessories.

Established in 2009, JustBrand now has a range of physical stores and online properties, including their flagship location, The Warming Store, in Philadelphia. This store recently saw a big endorsement on national television when journalist Anderson Cooper talked about his love of The Warming Store on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert!

Glowing praise indeed, although business had been booming long before this. The company has a rapidly growing team of employees, two warehouses in Philadelphia, and multiple partnerships with warehouses around the country allowing for easy fulfilment.

Myself and Zach had a chat about life before and after joining forces with RetailOps in 2017, where he gave some insight into what the brand faced prior to employing a true inventory management system and what benefits they saw to their bottom line after it was in place.

The JustBrand Story: Life Before RetailOps

JustBrand has a story that a lot of companies can probably relate to. Their journey began in a cold garage in 2008, when two family members – Brandon Singer and Justin Silverman – saw the opportunity to create an eCommerce business catering to people who spend their time outside.

However, the start of the life in business was far from the slick operation they currently run. As Zach recalls, ‘It was like a pizza place! Everyone was running around, trying to get as many orders as they could out the door. It was chaos – if we saw we were out of tomatoes (our inventory) on a shelf, we just ordered more tomatoes.’

Ultimately, if an item wasn’t where they thought it was, they assumed that meant they didn’t have it and therefore needed to order more.

Unfortunately, JustBrand didn’t have the option of tracking inventory through labels or lots. They couldn’t do ship audits to confirm a pulled item corresponded to an order, and they couldn’t do cycle counts to assess what they had on hand.

This was not due to a lack of trying. As Zach told me, ‘We tried implementing an inventory management software to have good inventory management. We attempted to do it ourselves and use other systems, but everything we tried just seemed to crumble and couldn’t function as a true inventory system.’

JustBrand needed a way to have complete visibility and accurate forecasting of their inventory – to determine how much inventory they had at any given moment and where it was located to meet customer demand.

Despite their inventory management problems, the brand continued to grow, meaning new employees were taken on as 600 to 700 orders were fulfilled per day during the holiday season. This meant their logistics model had to change. The speed at which they were growing forced them to implement more of a Just-In-Time business process.

‘Most of the inventory that was received by our warehouse was immediately fulfilled and left the warehouse. It never sat on our shelves,’ Zach explained.

Zach knew this practice wasn’t sustainable and, to go where they wanted to be, they needed something better.

Then, like many retailers, a major event was the catalyst that pushed them towards a tracking system. In the case of JustBrand, it was a theft.

As Zach explained. ‘Unfortunately, we had a major theft before RetailOps. We had no trackability of inventory. For us, that was a huge part of deciding to have new visibility in the warehouse.’

''Unfortunately, we had a major theft before RetailOps. We had no trackability of inventory. For us, that was a huge part of deciding to have new visibility in the warehouse.''

Sadly, JustBrand isn’t alone here, with 42.7% of inventory shrinkage attributed to employee theft. In fact, the majority of our current and prospective customers reached out to RetailOps because of a theft or an unexplainable loss of inventory.

For JustBrand, things had to change.

How JustBrand Took Advantage of RetailOps

In 2016, JustBrand Limited began a conversation with RetailOps about their operational struggles. They were eager to make a change that would put them in a better position of reaching their goal of becoming a globally recognizable eCommerce brand.

When implementing a true inventory management system – especially when you are not coming from one already – it requires the organization to have complete buy in on the software’s processes and philosophy.

At RetailOps we make sure that every prospective customer understands our retail experience, philosophy and process. JustBrand chose RetailOps because of our retail expertise and our experience of scaling with businesses that achieve well over $40 million in revenue a year.

In 2017, JustBrand finally took the plunge and seized control of their operations by implementing our powerful inventory management solution.

As Zach admitted to me, ‘We were a multi-million-dollar business without a true inventory system. Before RetailOps, I think we were just really creative and lucky. When we look back on life before an inventory management system – knowing what it does for us today – it’s pretty absurd that we didn’t do it earlier!’

''We were a multi-million-dollar business without a true inventory system. Before RetailOps, I think we were just really creative and lucky. When we look back on life before an inventory management system – knowing what it does for us today – it’s pretty absurd that we didn’t do it earlier!'' - Zach Silverman

I asked Zach for some examples of how RetailOps had made life easier.

‘Many days we would find the same product in, say, four locations. We would keep ordering in the same SKUs, even though we already had the item in different locations. However, because we didn’t have visibility of it, we didn’t know it was there.’

‘Once we could track SKU by SKU of where things were located, that completely changed the business for us,’ he added.

‘Now that we have a true inventory system that can tell us the cost per item, where it’s located, and the performance of it, it seems silly that we didn’t do this earlier.’

‘RetailOps set up our auditing process and now things are so much easier. We can accurately count rows of our warehouse in a day. Before, it was something that we wouldn’t even want to think about.’

Is an Inventory Management System Right for You?

The story of JustBrand is familiar and we are always pleased to hear such glowing feedback. However, it’s not for us to say whether your company needs an inventory management system like RetailOps.

Only you can make that call.

There’s no set guideline that says ‘when you hit $XX revenue a year or are fulfilling XX orders a day you need one’.

We have brand-new retailers adding the RetailOps suite to their process, while we are also approached by longstanding retailers with $20 million a year in revenue! It really comes down to what headaches you are feeling at the time and what your business goals are.

There are just some things that only software can solve, like real-time inventory management. One of the fastest ways to sell more (without backorders) is through an inventory management system that will push updated inventory levels to all available sales channels after an order has been received.

You also have the accountability that an inventory management system offers – the possibility of overbuying, overselling, or sudden inventory loss are all eliminated.

To get the most out of whatever software you choose, you need to be completely bought into that software and open to making some changes - even those that may result in adding additional steps to your normal workflow.

Retailers coming onto the RetailOps platform without another inventory management solution will typically see some new process or steps they aren’t accustomed to. As Zach told me, ‘RetailOps added two or three steps into our receiving process - that took some time to get used to. But we quickly realized that, if you receive things properly, you can cut out three or four mistakes that happen along the way.’

Our processes and philosophy is a result of our extensive retail experience.

Ultimately, having visibility and control of your inventory is critical to the success of any retailer. Regardless of whether you operate your own warehouse or have a third-party logistics (3PL) company take care of it for you, by knowing what you have, where it lives, and how much it costs, you will be able to scale your business further than you ever imagined.

If you want to replicate JustBrand’s success and implement a powerful inventory management system for your brand, get in touch with RetailOps today.