East Perry //
Ops & Scaling IDEAS
Prepared by: Heath Armstrong
heath@heatharmstrong.com
1. The Core Architectural Shift
Janine, to scale East Perry effectively and make the business a highly desirable, data-proven asset for securing future funding, I am proposing a fundamental shift in your operational architecture.
Currently, Shopify acts as your fulfillment master, and your team is forced to manually sync and bridge gaps using Sumtracker and Google Sheets. My plan is to reverse this.
We will install an enterprise warehouse management system (possibly ShipHero, to be evaluated) as your central Command Center. It will act as the single source of truth for all inventory, purchasing, and fulfillment, automatically pushing accurate data out to Shopify and eliminating the manual workarounds.
The ultimate goal: Maintain enough high-velocity inventory to completely eliminate customer wait times for non-custom items. By making this architectural shift to a central system, we will have the best shot at achieving the following:
- Maximize Fulfillment Velocity & Efficiency: Dramatically reduce warehouse man-hours and increase daily shipping capacity by eliminating manual, one-by-one order processing in favor of automated batching. Sheepskins will still have to be manually picked for quality control, but you will be set up better to fulfill bulk like-orders all at once.
- Zero Backorder Guesswork: Implement systemic FIFO logic to handle short-shipments without manual spreadsheet triage.
- Automated Purchase Planning: Utilize software to calculate burn rates and generate suggested reorder dates for manual review for each SKU. This will serve as a centralized hub for managing all suppliers, inbound POs, and estimated arrival dates.
- Massively Reduce Cancellations & Returns: Cancellations are primarily driven by customers frustrated with long wait times. By securing funding to maintain deeper inventory levels and using new systems to provide radical transparency on preorder delivery times, you will drastically reduce customer churn and protect bottom-line revenue.
2. The Foundation: 300+ SKU Migration
The bulk of the heavy lifting for this project will be the migration and restructuring of your inventory data. While a new system can bulk-import the raw data easily, the real work lies in organizing and mapping this data so the new "Command Center" functions perfectly.
Each of your SKU's (300+ based on the spreadsheet Kathy gave me access to) will need to be systematically reviewed and configured. It's possible to just start with the most important ones, but eventually it has to be done from everything old and new that you want to continue to use. This includes:
- Making sure they are properly connected to Shopify.
- If necessary, making sure they are tracking across any other marketplaces you are on correctly (Etsy, etc).
- Verifying any master & alias SKU connections.
- Inputting and verifying exact SKU details, barcodes, weights, dimensions, etc., for accurate shipping profiles.
- Inputting exact supplier data, lead times, and unit costs to enable automated (but manually reviewed) Purchase Planning.
3. Identifying Your Current Bottlenecks
Your rapid growth has outpaced your current technology, leading to a fulfillment state that currently requires extensive manual cleanup. To protect your profit margins and warehouse team, I recommend we do our best to fix the following critical friction points on top of the new central inventory management system:
- Manual Priority Triage: Ian manually updates a Google spreadsheet daily to track shipping priorities. This leaves room for human error when deciding which orders to fulfill first during inventory shortages. As you noted, high-value items (like a $1,500 rug) need to be auto-prioritized over smaller items (like bottle warmers) to mitigate the impact of cancellations and refunding massive orders.
- Disjointed Returns Processing: Handling physical returns and exchanges is likely a manual, multi-step process right now. Receiving an item, checking its quality, updating the inventory spread, and remembering to go into Shopify to issue the refund or exchange leaves too much room for human error and wasted time.
- Inefficient Packing & Low Velocity: The fulfillment team is currently processing orders one at a time. Clicking through dozens of identical, single-item orders individually wastes critical man-hours and artificially caps your daily shipping velocity.
- Shared Inventory Across Listings: Selling the exact same physical item (e.g., Sheepskin as both a Dog Toy and a Baby Toy) creates constant allocation and overselling challenges because Shopify and Sumtracker bundles do not communicate properly.
- Manufacturer Short-Shipments: Vendors occasionally deliver fewer items than ordered. When this happens, your team is forced to make difficult, manual allocation decisions on who gets their product and who stays on backorder.
- Pre-Sales & Scheduled Drops: Taking orders for future inventory clogs your current packing queue and confuses the daily fulfillment flow because your current systems don't seamlessly map incoming purchase orders to waiting customers.
- Potential Shipping Margins (Bonus): While Shopify provides good baseline shipping rates, you may be missing out on dynamic, real-time rate shopping across multiple carriers to find the absolute cheapest label for every specific box weight and dimension.
4. System Architecture & Exact Solutions
By making this new software the central Command Center, we can work to reduce or eliminate your current bottlenecks via the following exact features. I still need to verify the power of ShipHero (or other options), but I think this is all attainable:
| Current Problem | The Solution |
|---|---|
| Manual Priority Sorting Spreadsheet triage for high-value orders and low stock. |
VIP & Value-Based Priority Rules: The system's Automation Rules can be configured to automatically flag high-value orders (e.g., orders over a certain dollar amount) or customer service replacements. The software automatically dictates priority, bumping these expensive orders to the front of the allocation queue when inventory is tight. |
| Inefficient Packing Picking identical orders one-by-one. |
Single Item Batches & Bulkship: The system filters for single-line-item orders of the exact same SKU. A picker goes to the bin, grabs 30 units, walks to the packing station, and scans the SKU once. Because the weight and box dimensions are identical for all 30 orders, the system instantly prints all 30 shipping labels in one click. I realize there might be slight weight variations in sheepskins, but you could set the shipping presets to the heavier side to save more money bulk-printing (in man-hours) than you would individually changing the weight of every package to save pennies on the shipping rate. This transforms possibly hours of manual clicking into a quick task, recovering massive amounts of man-hours and exponentially increasing daily shipping velocity. |
| Shared Inventory Risks Selling the same physical item across multiple storefront listings. |
Master & Alias SKUs: Both Shopify listings will map to one Master SKU in the system. When one sells, it instantly drops the inventory count for both listings on Shopify, preventing overselling without manual math. |
| Manufacturer Short-Shipments Vendors deliver less than expected, creating a backlog. |
Automated Allocation & Order Splitting: The system automatically allocates received inventory to the oldest backorders first (First-In, First-Out) or based on preset VIP/priority rules that can be put into place. If an order is partially in-stock, the system automatically splits the order, shipping what you have and keeping the rest on backorder. |
| Pre-Sales & Scheduled Drops Future orders clog the current daily queue. |
Sell-Ahead & Dynamic Backorders: When an out-of-stock item is ordered, the software places it in "Backorder" status (it won't print a pick ticket). You can use "Sell Ahead" to map incoming Purchase Orders to these sales. As soon as the PO hits the loading dock and is scanned (or manually received into the dashboard), the system automatically claims that inventory for the oldest backorders first. It then shifts these orders safely to the "Ready to Ship" queue, where your team can filter and batch-print the labels at their desired pace. |
| Disjointed Returns Manual restocking and refunding. |
Frictionless Returns (RMA) Management: The system natively handles the entire returns workflow. When a return arrives, staff simply scan the package, grade the item's condition, and click a button. The software automatically restocks the inventory (if undamaged) and instantly triggers the refund or replacement exchange directly in Shopify—turning a 10-minute manual chore into a 10-second scan. |
| Shipping Rates Leaving margin on the table. |
Potential Bonus - Automated Rate Shopping: While Shopify rates are competitive, a centralized system automatically compares negotiated rates between USPS, UPS, and other carriers in real-time, instantly printing the cheapest/fastest label for that specific package. |
5. The "Sandbox" Transition Roadmap
To eliminate operational risk, I recommend executing a Parallel Run. Your current Shopify and Sumtracker setup will remain fully live processing real orders while we build, map, and test the new system safely in the background.
| Stage | Action Plan |
|---|---|
| 01 / Parallel Sync | Integrate the WMS with Shopify in "Read-Only" mode. (Inventory pushing and fulfillment updates are toggled OFF). Sumtracker continues live operations. Import the raw data for your 300+ SKUs. |
| 02 / SKU Configuration | Execute the heavy lifting: mapping all 300+ SKUs to aliases, adding supplier data, and building Automation Rules for pre-sells, backorders, VIP priorities, and custom items. Connect carrier accounts. |
| 03 / Hardware & Sandbox Training | Deploy mobile scanners and label printers. Your team runs "test-picking" on actual incoming orders using a sandbox/test environment provided by the software. This builds workflow muscle memory safely without sending accidental tracking emails or affecting live Shopify data. |
| 04 / Live Cutover Test | Weekend freeze. Disconnect Sumtracker completely. Perform a final physical cycle count of all 300+ SKUs. Toggle the system's sync features to "LIVE" to act as the new Command Center and handle all future inventory routing. |
| 05 / Data Forecasting | Activate predictive purchasing. The system begins analyzing sales velocity to manage your PO generation and vendor lead times automatically. |
| 06 / Ongoing Troubleshooting | A dedicated phase to work out the kinks, refine our automation rules, and troubleshoot on the warehouse floor. Most premium systems will provide an onboarding/implementation team to assist us through this phase to ensure success. |