It’s time to go back to class

Our goal is to create content that resonates with the community and help them improve the efficiency of inventory operations ten fold.

We understand building an eCommerce business is tough. And we also know that it becomes overwhelming to keep track of all the modern day jargon and terms around inventory management and operations. That's why we wanted to create this handy mini pocketbook to help you quickly brush up on your inventory knowledge.

Best use-case of this mini guide: Share this with your new joinee or rest of the teams (finance, marketing or support) so that no one goes pale when the word SKU enters the chat :)

Here is a list of all the important terms under Inventory Management

Top Revenue Terms

• ‍Revenue: The total income gained
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• Forecast revenue: A prediction of what the income gained could be over a specific time period, based on the purchase orders outstanding and replenishment rates
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• Sales: The number of units sold historically
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• Forecast sales: A prediction of the future sales done over a specific time period, based on the purchase orders outstanding and replenishment rates. It is closely related to demand planning and forecasting‍

Product and SKU related terms

• COGS (Cost of Goods Sold): The historical cost of goods sold
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• Retail Price: The price the consumer will pay for a good
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• Unit Costs: The cost of an individual unit
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• Category: A grouping of certain products
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• Product: An article or substance that is manufactured or refined for sale
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• Raw Materials: The basic material from which a product is made
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• SKU/Variant: Stands for Stock Keeping Unit. These are used by retailers to identify and track inventory and goods.
  Made up of a unique combination of letters and numbers that determine the characteristics of the product.
  They allow companies to more accurately and efficiently account for all stock.

Payment Terms and Purchase Order

• Collection: A grouping of products
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• Days on Hand: This is a measure of how much time is needed for a business to run through its inventory
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• Purchase Order / PO: An official document issued by a buyer committing to pay the seller for the sale of specific products or services to be delivered in the future.
  
  See the list of the top purchase order tracking and management apps in Shopify
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• Minimum Order Quantity / MOQ: The minimum number of products required for purchase.
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• ‍Lead time: The time it takes for production to start and finish
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• Payment terms: This takes the form of a document that details how and when goods should be paid for

This glossary is updated every quarter. If you enjoyed reading this mini guide and did scroll till this point, feel free to reach out to us if you would like us to include terms that we have missed out on

We have also created a list of apps to help you solve inventory management issues on Shopify.

Prediko wants to democratise inventory operations. That's why we created this modern inventory app in a heavily competitive space. Also learn why we are one of the top Inventory Planner alternatives.

Democratising Operational Excellence by Youri Moskovic

• Introducing Prediko — the Inventory OS for omni-channel brands.
• Our goal is to help you plan and order your inventory stock seamlessly.

Legacy software plagues inventory management space

The main issue is that not much has really changed in the world of inventory operations or management in terms of a better software.

In the D2C industry and the Shopify ecosystem, there has been a sudden burst of apps & software that help with acquisition & retention.

Unfortunately, there has been no major facelift in the world of inventory management software. There are a lot of legacy apps & software available in the market. However these apps & software don't cater to the needs of the modern D2C operators.

In addition to legacy software & apps, the majority of the brands still use decade old practices to keep their businesses running.

They try to estimate future sales and production orders via excel spreadsheets while inventory financing gets done through traditional banking institutions or venture capital.

These practices are error-prone, unpredictable, and lead to detrimental business outcomes:

1. >$1T is lost every year from inventory distortion due to poor planning
2. 40% of small & mid-sized businesses face rejections for inventory financing (vs. 17% for multinationals)

As businesses scale, their operational needs grow in complexity and legacy solutions let them down. This multi-trillion dollar problem is part of the reasons why independent and emerging brands fail to compete against dominant market leaders.

Eli Khrapko, co-founder & COO at Wype, one of Prediko's first customers:

“Planning and Financing Raw Materials is a big and expensive strain on our business and cash flow”.

Existing challenges for D2C inventory operators

The rise of eCommerce platforms like Shopify and industry leading tools such as Gorgias, Attentive and Zencargo has been key in supporting the emergence of eCommerce entrepreneurs. However, as privacy settings become more restrictive, online marketing performance are increasingly less predictable and this has greatly impacted the ability to foresee inventory and sales behaviours.

As the pandemic hit, the problem became even more obvious as online sales accelerated while supply chains slowed down. With lead times, shipping costs, and raw materials hitting record highs, brands couldn’t catch up with demand which resulted in an increase in out-of-stock.

Brands order lots of “just in case” stock only to find themselves with excess inventory which they can’t get rid of profitably today.

Such drastic events impact the ability of brands to predict their needs which means the difference between thriving and dying for companies. Caught between inflation and complex supply chain and e-commerce environments, it is crucial for brands to adapt ways of working to build sustainable businesses.

Freeing up capital through better planning and purchasing decisions will allow brands to focus on initiatives that grow their business.

Introducing Prediko

Prediko is an inventory OS that lets omni-channel brands plan and order their stock seamlessly. Our product helps brand operators eliminate stock-outs & overstock while spending less on inventory.

Without technical efforts, brands are able to connect their stores with just one-click integration to easily plan growth scenarios with help of smart Prediko insights, benefit from recommendations on ordering to keep healthy stock.

Anna Laura Hoefer, founder at Ripa Ripa, Prediko customer:

“Since using Prediko we better organise our supply chain; we do not risk being sold out on our bestselling products anymore, keep track of our inventory, and plan future orders accordingly. This increases our sales and reduces excess inventory which is a big win for us.

We founded Prediko in July 2022.

We built a stellar team of supply chain, data science, and finance experts. We confirmed our initial hypothesis by developing a product that is actively used by customers.

Raising capital to accelerate our efforts

Today we’re excited to announce that Prediko has raised a $5m seed round led by Felix Capital. Sitting at the intersection between retail, commerce enablement, and fintech, they are the perfect partner to accelerate our growth.

Successful apps & software such as Mejuri, Mirakl, and Juni sit under their umbrella already. An investment in Prediko is indicative not just of the need to support your chosen sector but the tools that help fuel it.

To support us in our mission we also welcome strategic investors HelloWorld and Nomad Capital as well as CEOs/founders of industry leading businesses who all invested as angels in our Seed round: Guillaume Pousaz from Checkout, Victor Jacobsson from Klarna, Romain Lapeyre from Gorgias, Romain Niccoli from Pigment, Richard Fatal from Zencargo, Pierre-Louis Lacoste from Ankorstore, and Fabrice Haiat from Yoobic.

Rodrigo Martinez, Founding Partner at HelloWorld, Prediko investor:

“Shopify enabled a new generation of entrepreneurs to operate the front-end of their ecommerce businesses with ease. Prediko has the potential to enable those and a new generation of ecommerce businesses to run their back-office operations at a high degree of excellence and profitability. The founders have the experience and hungriness to make that happen!”

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Using experience to build a practical software or apps for Shopify D2C brands

My co-founder & CTO Nicolas and I used to develop complex predictive and prescriptive operating softwares for large legacy retailers such as Tesco and DFS that unlocked millions of dollars in value for them.

I go in depth in this conversation with Storetasker to explain Prediko's vision

Surrounded by eCommerce entrepreneurs, we saw firsthand the similarity of operations between Enterprises and SMBs and the lack of support in inventory related activities for latter. We saw this as an opportunity and created a product that could help millions of brands.

To build on our enterprise experience, we joined Techstars NYC where we met with hundreds of brands to get a deeper understanding of their inventory operations.

We quickly saw a growing, underserved community of omni-channel businesses struggling to plan and order their inventory on excel spreadsheets and looking for a solution to professionalise their inventory acquisition and management.

Prediko’s now 10-strong team boasts a number of top engineering, product, and finance professionals from Lydia, Amazon, and Goldman Sachs. Together we are building the Inventory OS that lets omni-channel brands plan and order their stock seamlessly.

Jessica Warch, Founder at Kimaï, Prediko customer:

“Our forecasting is more accurate and our buying calendar is clearer than before which enables us to give our suppliers more visibility on orders.”

Journey Ahead for Prediko

We want to build a software or an app that plays a significant role in democratising operational excellence globally by making what was only accessible to the world’s largest companies and now available to businesses of any size.

Julien Codorniou, Partner at Felix Capital, Prediko investor:

“Prediko’s vision to provide a 360 inventory management solution, from planning to financing, is very powerful. Having too little inventory to sell is a nightmare, and having too much inventory is a disaster. Youri and Nicolas spent a lot of time in that space before founding Prediko and they understand extremely well the pain points, but also the opportunities ahead for their customers. We’re super excited to be part of this journey with them and bring more software and AI to help their customers get inventory management right”.

Prediko is building a category-defining business that is accelerating the speed at which entrepreneurs can operate. We help them remove barriers to save time, release working capital, and grow revenue — operations just got exciting.