Stockouts cost retail brands roughly $1T every year. And while the obvious solution is to just avoid going out of stock, that’s easier said than done–especially for DTC brands selling on multiple channels.
Sure, you can always place your purchase order (PO) super early. But you end up tying up working capital and paying a lot more in holding costs. Plus, with how quickly customer demand changes these days, you could easily end up with dead stock that won’t sell.
So, most brands choose to operate with a little risk. They’ll wait until the last feasible moment to restock, so they just barely beat the stockout (hopefully). And while this is the smarter play, more and more brands aren’t placing their orders in time.
That’s because most retailers don’t have complete inventory visibility and, as a result, lack insight into their stock levels or supply chains.
While lacking these insights was manageable when the global supply chain was somewhat predictable, those days are long over. This leaves brands guessing when it’s time to restock, and all too often, waiting until it’s too late. As a result, industry-wide stockouts are on the rise.
So, how can modern brands ensure they always get their purchase orders in at the perfect time? Well, it starts by taking the guesswork out of your operations.
When you look at all the super successful ecommerce brands, you’ll notice one common trend: They proactively (and seemingly effortlessly) navigate the market with data-driven precision and artist-like execution.
Meanwhile, most retailers try to scale, scale fast and scale at any cost. And they end up constantly chasing their own tail until finally, they run out of capital. When this happens, brands are forced to go out of business.
At Cogsy, we want every retail brand to succeed – and we want it to be as effortless as possible. That’s why we’re building simple yet powerful action-taking tools that promote operational excellence for DTC brands.
But that doesn’t mean simply giving you more data. You have enough data–too much to know what to do with. Instead, we help you find the signal in all that noise.
To do this, Cogsy puts all your data into one operations platform: your single source of truth. With it, your team can confidently generate optimized purchase orders, sell on backorder, and host marketing promotions that will actually reach your revenue goals.
In other words, Cogsy makes sure you know exactly how to turn that data into actionable insights that will improve your operations and grow your brand. That way, you can stop guessing and start operating with data-driven precision and artist-like execution, too.
Cogsy will keep a 24/7 eye on your brand’s inventory, so you don’t have to.
But that can’t happen unless you get your purchase orders in at precisely the right time.
Replenish alerts are your friendly reminder that it’s the optimal time to restock. With these automatic email notifications, you can quit babysitting your inventory and guessing when to submit your next PO.
And by considering factors like real-time stock levels, customer demand, order lead time, and minimum order quantity, we’ll determine the perfect replenish point for each SKU—not too early, not too late.
As soon as your brand approaches that ideal reordering window, we’ll send you a replenish alert. Basically, these alerts say, “Hey, friend–it’s time to submit a purchase order.” That way, you can submit your PO with just enough time to avoid a stockout.
Plus, when we hit your inbox, we’ll have an optimized purchase order drafted for you. And we’ll link to it in the email alert for easy access. All you have to do is check that PO and hit “submit.”
Your team will always have the opportunity to edit the PO, of course! But our inventory replenishment software will do the heavy lifting for you, so the humans on your team can speed through the operational mundanity and focus on initiatives that will grow your brand.
But you don’t have to wait until you need to take action to pulse-check your inventory levels. We’re happy to email daily or weekly updates, letting you know which SKUs you’ll need to restock soon if that gives you peace of mind.
Simply set how often you want us to send your replenish alerts and who should receive them in the Cogsy app. Then, we’ll take care of rest!
Let’s be honest–checking your stock levels is a mundane operational task. And it’s not exactly quick or easy.
Minimum, it takes 10 minutes to scan your stock levels and confirm everything looks okay. But if you even think you need to restock something (demand changes or stock levels aren’t optimal), that number goes up substantially.
And most brands run this check daily, including weekends. Some even check multiple times a day. In other words, your brand spends a conservative 60+ hours annually just considering if you need to restock (forget about the added time it takes to create and place POs).
With replenish alerts, Cogsy constantly runs these mundane checks for you in the background. And in a 30-second update, you know if you need to restock anything. This frees up hours every week for other initiatives that are actually worth your time (like testing assumptions, scaling what works, or protecting your work-life balance).
Your customers can’t buy inventory you don’t have. So, when stockouts happen, your revenue takes a massive hit. Luckily, Cogsy’s predictive inventory intelligence avoids the stockout in the first place by notifying you when it’s time to replenish.
And we’ll do most of the heavy lifting, like calculating how much of each SKU to restock and building out the purchase order. Our calculation balances:
And we’ll have the results waiting for you in an optimized, ready-to-submit PO (that you can adjust as needed). If you still end up out of stock on a SKU, for whatever reason, Cogsy empowers you to sell on backorder. That way, it doesn’t impact your revenue. The brands that do this see a marginal drop in conversion rates compared to when the product is in stock.
Can I be blunt? A lot of retailers blame wasted time (or not having enough time) for their brands staying stagnant. And it’s definitely a contributing factor.
But the moment you go out of stock or have too much inventory on hand, your working capital is working against you. And it’s more likely why your brand isn’t growing the way you want it to be. (It’s also the top reason brands went out of business in 2021).
With replenish alerts, you can stop leaving sales on the table by always having enough inventory on-hand. And as a result, you’ll naturally see a bump in revenue. This newfound revenue bump is a game changer.
With it, you can invest in your brand’s future growth. This might mean hiring top talent, expanding your product lines, or creating safety margins. In other words, this revenue is the working capital that can fund initiatives that unlock more revenue.
So, are you ready to do your business a favor? Try Cogsy free for 14 days.