Baik Brands Gets Inventory Glow Up and Saves 150 Hours a Month

“We settled on Inventory Planner because it is built for large, multi-location, multi-channel retail operations like ours” – Jean Baik, Chief Merchandising Officer, Baik Brands 

Traditionally, retailers have always started with physical stores and then expanded online. 

However, there’s a growing trend for the reverse approach, with more businesses starting online before opening physical stores. 

It’s a smart strategic move to diversify revenue streams and meet customer demand for in-person shopping experiences.  

Baik Brands – the parent company behind well-known $1 beauty and lifestyle brands including Miss A, AOA Studio and AOA Skin – is testament to how well it can pay off.  

The retailer started out with online e-commerce stores in 2013 and now has 30 bricks and mortar stores, as well as selling wholesale to chains including Dollar General and pOpshelf.  

However, large retailers with thousands of SKUs require a slick tech stack to run a high-volume, multichannel operation – and Baik Brands is no exception.  

So after lining up the ultimate retail combo of Shopify as its e-commerce platform and Brightpearl by Sage as its retail operating system, Baik Brands added the cherry on top: Inventory Planner by Sage. 

Planning perfection 

Co-founder and Chief Merchandising Officer, Jean Baik, says: “We’d been using a very manual approach to planning our inventory. Every department had its own Excel spreadsheet and was making their own calculations on what to order and when.  

“Sometimes, we wouldn’t be certain about how much stock we needed for a certain location, so we’d just guess and send 100 units. But sometimes that store would need 200 units, and sometimes it would need 30.  

“Inevitably, errors were made and we were regularly running out of top-selling products, which was ultimately hurting our bottom line.  

“We had to find a better way – and after exploring all the apps and tools available, we settled on Inventory Planner because it is built for large, multi-location, multi-channel retail operations like ours.” 

As a top-rated inventory planning app, Inventory Planner by Sage is packed with features and functionality that helps retail enterprises like Baik Brands save time, boost revenue and adapt to market changes.  

It offers reliable, always-up-to-date demand forecasting which factors in supplier timescales, seasonality and promotions alongside historical sales data. It then translates these forecasts into simple, easy-to-understand buying reports. 

The software slots seamlessly into your existing tech stack and implementation is fast, hassle-free and led by experts.  

Baik with a bang 

Jean says: “For us, it’s made a massive difference to gain complete visibility across all inventory at all locations. We can monitor how slowly or quickly products are moving and Inventory Planner proactively alerts us to the risk of stockouts and overstock.  

 “Inventory Planner does a great job of interpreting the different needs of our online and bricks and mortar locations. Our physical stores typically have a summer sales spike and Inventory Planner has really helped us stay in stock, especially across best-selling items – which we’d previously struggled with.  

 “Our forecasting is so much more reliable and accurate now.” 

 For Baik Brands, one of the biggest benefits of joining Inventory Planner has been the time saved on purchasing – around 150 hours a month.  

After automatically forecasting demand, the software provides reliable buying recommendations – showing all teams at Baik exactly which variants to order for each location, and when.  

Inventory Planner also integrates seamlessly with Brightpearl so Baik Brands is able to create orders directly within the platform, sending them direct to suppliers in a matter of clicks. The app even incorporates vendor constraints like MOQ, case size/UOM and vendor-specific SKUs, into POs automatically.  

“The automatic creation of POs from our buying reports is a massive time saver. Every single order used to take an hour, but now it’s done in 15 minutes. We’re often placing 200 orders at a time, which means a saving of 150 hours,” Jean adds.  

Multichannel magic 

With unlimited seats to access the software, the whole team at Baik Brands can see consolidated data from all sales channels in one central hub that’s easy to navigate. Plus, with 200+ metrics to choose from, everyone can customize their reporting to make faster, data-driven decisions.  

“Every single order used to take an hour, but now it’s done in 15 minutes. We’re often placing 200 orders at a time, which means a saving of 150 hours” – Jean Baik, Chief Merchandising Officer, Baik Brands 

The powerful overstock report has been a particular highlight for Baik, showing overstocked items (alongside the cost), so the team can quickly see which items to liquidate first to protect cash flow. 

Meanwhile, warehouse transfer reports offer intelligent recommendations on when and where to transfer items to avoid buying unnecessary stock.  

Jean says: “The reports have been game-changing and we have really valued having such excellent support and training from Inventory Planner so everyone in our business gets the best from the software.  

“We’ve got big plans for the future, with even more retail stores in the pipeline, and we’re confident Inventory Planner is the right tool to grow with us.” 

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