Flieber Blog

Still using Excel for inventory planning?It’s holding your business back. From lost sales to wasted time, the hidden costs of manual inventory management add up fast. Here's what you're missing, and how Flieber can help you turn things around.

The Hidden Costs of Sticking with Excel

• Lost Sales Due to Stockouts: Research shows that brands lose an average of 8% in sales due to stockouts—for example, if your business has $10M in annual sales, that’s $800,000 in lost revenue.
• Trapped Cash in Overstock: Excess inventory ties up capital and increases storage...

As December arrives, ecommerce businesses are focusing on the holiday rush—but the most successful companies know that 2025 has already started. Smart planning and data-driven strategies can set the foundation for sustained growth in the new year. This checklist will help you take the right steps to ensure your ecommerce store thrives in 2025.

Here’s your ultimate checklist, with actionable tips to grow and thrive next year:

If modern retailers know one thing, it’s that no matter how hard you plan, things almost always work out differently than expected. And nowhere is that more true than with your supply chain.

Suppliers, vessels, trucks, warehouses. Supply chains are complex and chaotic by nature. To solve the disconnects between your forecasts and what actually happens on the road, water, or factory floor, you need to be able to act and react as quickly as possible.

The good news is, there’s never been more data available to help you do that. With AI’s ability to crunch...

When it comes to AI, context is everything. But in the dynamic world of retail, there are countless movements across a range of products. AI can account for those intricacies for you, leading to a more nuanced and accurate forecast — but only if you have the right data to get the quality output you need.

The reality is, in a fast-paced retail environment, you won’t always have the full scope of data you need to get the accuracy you want out of your AI algorithms. 

The new world of retail isn’t for everyone. Less than 10% of emerging brands make it past the death valley curve of e-commerce. If you’re one of the few online retailers that has found success, you know you can’t afford to let your foot off the gas. From one or two top channels, you’re ready to expand.

According to research, for every three new sales channels you add, you could increase your revenue by up to 190%. The only catch? 

There’s a lot of talk about the role of AI in inventory. But with so many unknowns about how these tools are developed, how do you know whether your forecasting algorithm is really doing its job?

From just 4% in 2016, nearly a third of retailers are now using AI. But there’s a lot more to it than customer service bots and product recommendations. For retailers spending multiple hours per week on inventory, AI can help you make better replenishment decisions in less time.

Last week, we explored the top four use cases for AI in inventory. Today we’re taking a closer look at its current and future impact on what is arguably the most critical inventory task: forecasting.

After reaching the peak of the hype cycle last year, the AI fatigue is setting in. Modern retailers are done talking. They want practical ways to deliver value from AI.

The truth behind the buzz is that AI can help you achieve success with inventory as you scale — if you know how to use it.

With an unmatched ability to crunch vast amounts of data, AI can drastically improve your forecasting, save your team hours in manual data analysis, and help you make profitable business decisions in a fraction of the time.

Here are four ways modern brands and...

Tim Angel always wanted to build his own business. With a natural knack for problem solving, he loved coming up with new ideas to help make life easier.Today, he and the team at Zugu sell over $30M per year of their best-selling iPad cases. Tim and the team have expanded the brand’s footprint from three to 17 countries and are consistently leveling up its sales with each new launch.But it didn’t happen overnight. We sat down with Tim and his sister, Chief Operating Officer Jenn Angel, to get a glimpse into Zugu’s incredible story and learn how a highly...

From Amazon to Shopify and beyond, no matter which corner of commerce you operate in, you lose sales when your products go out of stock.

Every year, retailers lose an estimated $1.8 trillion due to inventory mismanagement. That’s roughly 7.8% of total global retail sales.

At Flieber, our team has onboarded over 3 million SKUs. We’ve found that the number for this subset of products is even more drastic: our calculations point to an average of 11.2% in lost sales. 

To understand the impact of these numbers on your own business, let me tell you the tale...