Implementing Inventory Management Software to Overcome Excel Challenges and Optimize Shopify Store: Swoveralls’ Journey

About Swoveralls

👥 Team Size: 9 | 📍 New York, USA | 👖 Apparel | 🛍️ Shopify

Swoveralls is a groundbreaking fusion of sweatpants and overalls that defines a new level of comfort you never knew you needed. Swoveralls, designed for everyone, offers inclusive sizing that embraces all body types, ensuring comfort for adults and children alike.

More than a mere garment, Swoveralls redefines comfort with a commitment to a better, cozier world. The brand's mission is to craft the world's comfiest apparel using sustainable resources and ethical manufacturing processes. In a nutshell, Swoveralls stands for comfort with a purpose. With customers connecting to this mission, the brand experienced rapid growth. Consequently, managing inventory in Excel became overly complex and inefficient.

Challenges

Swoveralls faced typical challenges in the eCommerce apparel sector, dealing with the laborious task of managing inventory, reordering, and stock analysis using inefficient Excel-based methods. This silent challenge required substantial daily effort, as navigating pivot tables and data manipulation posed constant obstacles in their quest for streamlined inventory management.

"I used to spend a ton of time, pulling my hair out, managing inventory, placing reorders, understanding what I need on hand."

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🔸 Manual Inventory Management

The brand used Excel spreadsheets to manage inventory and reordering processes. This method worked fine when Swoveralls first launched, but as the brand grew, it became a time-consuming, error-prone, and an inefficient  approach to manage inventory.

🔸 Inefficient Data Analysis

Using pivot tables and analyzing inventory data manually took too much time and effort. This made it difficult for the Svoweralls team to respond quickly to inventory needs.

🔸 Lack of Real-Time Insights 

Without the support of automated tools, the Swoveralls team struggled to monitor stock levels in real time. This lack of visibility resulted in delays when restocking popular items, leading to missed sales opportunities and a loss of revenue.

🔸 Stockouts and Overstocking

Lack of advanced forecasting and automated replenishment features mostly caused stockouts of high-demand products while overstocking slower-moving items.

🔸 Limited Time for Strategic Growth

The tedious nature of their manual inventory processes consumed valuable time that could have been better spent on strategic growth initiatives, such as product development and market expansion. As they aimed to grow, these inefficiencies became increasingly untenable.

Facing these challenges, Swoveralls recognized the urgent need for a more effective inventory management solution that could support their growth and enhance customer satisfaction

Solutions

In response to these challenges, Kyle turned to Fabrikatör, a transformative tool that streamlined inventory management and integrated seamlessly with Shopify. The solution extended beyond mere automation, offering detailed features tailored to Swoveralls' needs.

🔹 Real-Time Inventory Insights

With Fabrikatör, Swoveralls gained clear inventory visibility into their stock levels. This clarity enabled the team to make informed inventory decisions and implement effective restocking strategies, ensuring they always had the right products.

🔹 Suggested Restocks

The automated restocking feature became a game-changer. By analyzing sales data, available stock, and incoming orders, Fabrikatör provided precise restock suggestions. This helped Swoveralls keep popular items readily available and minimized the risk of overstocking slow-moving products.

🔹 Backorder Feature

Even when items went out of stock, Swoveralls didn’t lose sales opportunities, thanks to Fabrikatör’s backorder feature. This feature allowed the brand to capture sales during stockouts, ensuring customer demand was always met.

🔹 ShipHero Integration

The integration with ShipHero further streamlined Swoveralls' fulfillment process, creating a smooth and scalable operation that could grow alongside the brand.

Through this partnership, Swoveralls overcame its inventory hurdles and positioned itself for sustained growth and success.

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Let’s hear it from Kyle himself:

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📌 Their transition from Excel to Fabrikatör was quick and hassle-free. With just a 45-minute onboarding session, Swoveralls imported existing purchase orders in under 10 minutes, thanks to Fabrikatör's efficient import tool. Continuous live chat support from Fabrikatör provided the additional reassurance needed during this significant change.

📌 Kyle Bergman also shared his thoughts on the transformation Fabrikatör brought to Swoveralls on LinkedIn. You can find it here.