Neat Method began as a service provider for home organization. Founded by Ashley Murphy, Marissa Hagmeyer, and Molly Graves in 2010, Neat Method is now the largest luxury home organizing company, with professional organizers across the US and Canada. The company was acquired by Whitmor in 2017.

After the acquisition, Whitmor began manufacturing goods specifically for Neat Method, opening up new streams of retail and dropshipping revenue. We caught up with Sterling Wilson from Neat Method to learn how SkuVault Core revolutionized the company’s existing ERP system, enabling the team to increase order volumes and streamline warehouse processes. 

Life before SkuVault Core

“The existing ERP system wasn’t going to work for a dropship operation. From a speed and inventory capabilities standpoint – and the picking process inside of it – we couldn’t customize that system for it to work on a drop ship level,” Sterling begins.

He continues, “We needed something that could have multiple warehouses. When you’re sharing one inventory across multiple selling platforms, you get concerned that one customer can come in and take too much. We were afraid there was no inventory buffer. That the man-hours and time it would take to ship out even a hundred orders a day – and to do so without making a mistake – would be challenging to accomplish within our 24-hour shipment goal.”

He expanded further, “It wasn’t necessarily that we’d be capped at a certain number of orders per day. Rather the labor hours we’d have to allocate to meet the fulfillment needs would be too high.”

Overcoming labor and order volume challenges 

Sterling explains, “With Amazon being our main customer, we were afraid when we turned on the switch that we were going to get 300 orders that we couldn’t fulfill. But, SkuVault Core integrated seamlessly with the other systems we were using. We have two warehouses in it, and have set inventory buffers to push certain quantities to certain marketplaces to optimize profit on different channels and prevent over-sales – all with fewer labor hours. 

As soon as we switched to SkuVault Core, we got several hundred orders. Because of the system we’d implemented, we were able to ship each one within 24 hours, which is amazing because that gives us guaranteed delivery status inside Amazon’s Vendor Central.” 

Jumping to current-day figures, Sterling reflects, “Now, we process over 700 orders a day Monday through Friday, and it’s a one-man operation – one-and-a-half when I help out on overloaded days. We feel like we’re at max efficiency using SkuVault Core. It’s a time and headache saver as it’s easy to move inventory around, usually within a couple of clicks of a button, and it’s very rare that I have to reach out to a customer service person.” 

“As soon as we switched to SkuVault Core, we got several hundred orders. Because of the system we’d implemented, we were able to ship each one within 24 hours, which is amazing because that gives us guaranteed delivery status inside Amazon’s Vendor Central.”

Upping SKUs, onboarding more staff, and reducing errors

Highlighting current operations and future goals, Sterling says, “Right now, we’re at about 88 SKUs, with the goal to push more to 150, 200 SKUs before the end of Q1. So we’re going to need more labor. We have one guy right now. I would bet within the next couple of months, we’ll have three or four.”  

On the topic of training new workers, Sterling adds, “A lot of the labor we bring in initially is going to be temp labor. So we need to make sure we’re not making mistakes. SkuVault Core is a very easy platform to use and is relatively dummy-proof from a manager and admin standpoint, and also from a picker and packer standpoint.”

On how the system works, he embellished, “We’re talking item, location, quantity, scan. There’s an item listed, a location you go to, and a barcode to scan. You can’t scan the wrong product and move forward. It stops you. It won’t move forward until you find the right product.” 

Reflections on onboarding and service

“The onboarding process was great. I can’t remember any major issue that came up,” Sterling summarized.  

He goes on to explain in more depth, “At one point, we were looking at changing EDI and order management providers, although we planned on keeping SkuVault Core as the inventory management side of that. But when we started the integration [with the other provider], it went horrifically on a bunch of different levels. The inventory integration was very clunky. But the SkuVault Core team was still willing to jump on the phone with us whenever. We felt like they were the only partner we had that was actively trying to get to the root cause of the problem. So, it came to a point where we ended up just forgetting the other options and going back to what we were doing with SkuVault Core.”

“The onboarding process was great. I can’t remember any major issue that came up.”