Retales: E-Commerce Growth Stories

From Traditional Retail to Digital Powerhouse: ROKA London's Journey to E-commerce Success and AI Integration

Brightpearl Podcasts Season 3 Episode 2

Ever wondered how to successfully transform a traditional retail brand into a digital powerhouse?

Join us as we chat with Peter Gough, Chief Operating Officer at ROKA London,  who shares the incredible journey of turning their outdoor lifestyle and accessories brand into a thriving digital and direct-to-consumer business. Discover how they experienced massive growth thanks to their digital marketing approach, and the impact of increased online sales on their margins and brand.

In this conversation, Peter reveals how ROKA London harnessed the power of digital technology to further grow their business. Learn about their strategies for increasing engagement on social channels, utilizing email marketing to reach new audiences, and the success of their student discount program. Peter also discusses the implementation of a cloud-based SaaS platform, which allowed their employees the flexibility to work from anywhere, ultimately driving business growth.

Lastly, don't miss Peter's insights on the shift to AI, and the amazing opportunities it presents for businesses. Hear about the importance of embracing change, investing in the right technology for scalability, and integrating different channels for growth – such as expanding to new audiences and territories. If you're looking to leverage AI technology and scale your digital ecosystem, this episode is a goldmine of information you won't want to miss!

Subscribe to the Lightning 50 E-commerce Growth Hacking Podcast and get an instant notification when a new episode is released. We’re available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon, Stitcher, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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Speaker 1:

you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours you know, or days coming up with be prepared to be agile and quick and change. Be prepared to fail. That is the lean operating model. So what if we fail? If we trip up, we learn from it and ideally we don't do it again. We sometimes do And that's how we should always operate and that's what we're trying to do at Locker.

Speaker 2:

Hello, i'm Caroline and welcome to the Lightning 50 e-commerce growth hacking podcast. Today we're speaking with Peter Goff. He's the chief operating officer at Outdoor Lifestyle and Accessories brand Rocker London. But before we get to the interview, a quick message from our sponsor, inventory Planner. Are you tired of being buried in excess inventory? Then you need Inventory Planner, the number one demand planning software for e-commerce businesses. Inventory Planner gives you real time insights to identify slow moving products and hot sellers at a glance, helping you make informed decisions about your inventory and freeing up crucial cash flow. Right now, listeners of the Lightning 50 podcast can get a free trial of this incredible tool by heading to inventory-plannercom. Inventory Planner never knowingly over by or under by ever again. And now on to the conversation. Peter, thank you so much for joining us. So Rocker started out as a traditional retail brand in 2017 and it's now moved into digital and D2C. Tell me a little bit about the business today and how e-commerce has helped you get to where you are right now.

Speaker 1:

Sure, okay, that's quite a long one. So first of all, thanks for having me. I'm Peter. I'm the COO of Rocker. I suppose initially it's probably worth understanding how I got into Rocker. So I was advising Rocker. I'm traditionally from a digital agency background, a technologist, helping businesses through digital transformation and helping them grow and probably divert more to their digital channels. So that's my background. So I suppose that's where the relevance comes in. I left that business when it was acquired and started consulting and advising other businesses And Rocker happened to be one of them. I knew the founders.

Speaker 1:

Originally, rocker was a traditional B2B business, so Rocker is a bag and backpack brand. It's an outdoor lifestyle brand that has some big aspirations to be a more of a global outdoor brand. I think there were some still traditional channels, like the B2B channel, which is very hard to scale. So the B2B channel is selling their products direct into stores. So if you've got 500 or 1000 stores just in the UK, you have to have a number of agents and reps on the road physical to get your products out there, to go and see these customers, and that is scalable. Obviously it's people, it's time, it's quite a lot of manual overhead And they had started their direct to consumer channel.

Speaker 1:

I was able to look at that channel. The first thing I could do when I started advising them was to go to where I could make some quick impacts. So initially it was I leave the B2B alone. That's a mature business, that's where they've traditionally been And at the time almost 85% 90% of their revenue was coming through there. So I focused on the e-commerce side. That was during the COVID outbreak, so the pandemic was on. So that was starting to impact traditional sales as people were going less and less to shopping But also probably encouraged less to be outdoors, which was a worry, i suppose, and a risk at the time. But it was very easy to suddenly start having impacts on the D2C channel. So the first thing I done was start using my network.

Speaker 1:

So, being an agency background, I got a media agency and immediately to start really looking at the ads the pay-to-click ads and the shopping ads. So first thing we done was Rocker had dabbled in. It was really spending a minimum amount of month running it in-house. So having an agency take it over, doing proper keyword analysis and strategy For me that was the big game changer. The bags were in the shops as well and that made a massive difference. So I could see a correlation between actually we're selling more online where our bags are in stores, and we could see that once we started plugging in the data across both channels.

Speaker 1:

So we just went a lot heavier on pay-to-click ads initially And that had a huge impact. And that's where we started almost in triple figure growth, percentage wise for the online channel. It's been about increasing the share of online, so we naturally saw that during COVID. What it also does is, i think it makes a big impact on our margins and the way we think and the way we sell And the way we start to think about our brand and how it appeals to the direct to consumer sort of audience. I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 2:

Definitely. Let's talk a little bit about those growth stats that came off the back of working with an agency, and I'm guessing that gave you time, freed up your time to focus on different parts of the business too, and we'll get into some of those technology tools a little bit later on. So yeah, you saw some incredible growth in 2020, 2021. Just recently, 2022, there was 62% year on year growth, and then you're aiming for 56% this financial year. Those are big numbers, right? So you can't just be a case of oh hey, handing that over to the agency. Obviously, that's been quite a massive part of it, but you need to still have a really good, solid brand and solid e-commerce website and everything for when those customers kind of finally come to you. So talk to me about how you managed to translate those clicks that came to you into sales.

Speaker 1:

A few things really. Actually, some of the numbers you mentioned up for the whole business. So the digital channels are actually higher percentages So, but it's obviously as a channel wise it's got the highest target from a growth perspective. Now I mentioned pay per click. That was the first prioritization too, but there's a number of factors.

Speaker 1:

The first thing being an agency guy, i'm probably going anti-agency here. I was more into the tactical side. I didn't really want the strategy from the agency. I didn't need to understand the attribution immediately So and what I wanted to do was, as long as I knew the row at the top number, all I would focus on is our top revenue number for the e-commerce. So as long as our row, our return on ad spend, is at least 11 to 1, then 11 to 1 might go down to 10 to 1. I might tell the agency that, but then that for me is a good indicate, a good KPI. For now I'll worry about attribution later.

Speaker 1:

So the first thing is we went hard on pay per click and made sure our text and search was working well. There's just a number of factors that you have to make sure you're hiding factors. Is the SEO on our sites good enough? Are we getting enough organic search? But again, it was more about I could see our conversion rates. We use Shopify Plus, so we shifted all our websites, whether that's B2B and D2C, all onto Shopify Plus. So that gave us a bit more analytical and reporting and flexibility when it came to the actual sites and changing them. We were doing the ad spend on Google. We started focusing a bit more on Google shopping, making sure our ads and our images were appearing on there, so making sure the metadata and everything worked.

Speaker 1:

And then there's other factors, and a big one was reviews, trust pilot. So, again, going back to that point around, what are our quick wins that we can do? I knew we could onboard trust pilot quickly. I knew we had a very good customer service channel The guys who run that. They're super busy. They're talking to customers every day. We get great feedback. So I knew we'd install in trust pilot, which I felt was probably the best review site, most well known. We'd get a good score And invariably we have. We're a good 4.8, 4.9 out of 5. Again, when then review stars appear in Google, it just makes a massive difference. So what else? so we were just thinking what else can we do quickly to get more traffic into our site And let's not worry too much about the attribution right now. Let's focus on growth And I think there was. So it's then number of factors that help make, help really accelerate that growth for ROKR during them sort of early years.

Speaker 1:

Now what that's done for us as a business, it's changed. Well, it's changed our profitability. As much as we're focused on growth, profit has actually come out of that because we get higher margins going DTC. So as soon as you dial up from 10% to 20% online to 25% online to 30 to 33, it's making a big difference. And there's a magic number for us And it's I'm trying to get there. It's probably around 37, 36, 37% tips, the line. That channel becomes the most profitable channel purely because of the margin. So if we're flipping the model for this business, we still want the B2B. The B2B is very, very important to us and it will always be important to us, but I think there'll be a balance between them two channels very soon.

Speaker 2:

I see.

Speaker 1:

And I think that's what you've probably seen with some of the big brands, the huge high street brands. They all took E-com a lot more seriously over the last period. They wanted that, you know, over the last five, 10 years, because it's been so important to have that direct.

Speaker 2:

The thing is, when you're playing catch up in terms of E-com and going DTC, it's all important to get those quick wins under the belt. You said about trust, pilots and ad spend and analytics. Are there any other examples? maybe something that you implemented that you didn't think was going to be so great for growth, but you're like, oh wow, that was really impressive and it surprised us.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, there's a number in that. The one that really surprised me was if you look at our bags and backpacks. We don't. We always want to know our customers better, but based on what we do know is that we think our target audience is mainly female. Probably 30 to 55 is our core audience, but we go outside of both of them younger and older But predominantly we tend to sit in that area and our bags aren't. They're not the cheapest, but they're not. They're not really expensive, so they sit in between the 50 to maybe 100 price range And their backpacks and back. You know these are backpacks. These aren't made from recycled materials, so they're not like leather goods or anything like that and not more expensive goods. But the good thing is, you know they look great. They have a whole. Usp is about color, so they come in a variety of colors. You know one for every mood really. So there's some great options as well.

Speaker 1:

I'd say we're a female brand and that's important because it means we were easily attack our social channels a bit harder. So two things. So how can we get more engagement on Instagram, on Facebook and just the traditional social channels for now? Because actually, when you think about the age range. That's where they are. So we focused a bit hard there. The customer services team were the first people to take it on, and then we got extra people on board to help with the Instagram Facebook. So starting engaging with customers whether that's through competitions, just engagement, doing more posts, getting our photography and everything more smarter, really getting our brand messaging out there So that was great. You then, on the back of that, got email marketing. So how do we encourage more growth through that? When you send out to your list, we were seeing, actually we're getting quite a good take up here. If we release a limited edition print or a new color, we get a good take up.

Speaker 1:

But your question I suppose the best one for me was student discount. So that had been avoided really, because when we thought about our audience, it was that more it was a person who's probably at work, or a professional, or a young mother, or a family or a professional. So we hadn't really thought about the student market. Again, another quick win. I knew this. We could get this activated quickly. It would actually have a benefit, it would bring in a new audience.

Speaker 1:

So we went with our partner, student Beans. We looked at both UniDays and Student Beans. We chose Student Beans as a partner And that blew my mind with ROI, the cost of what it is, and then the ROI was way beyond that I had predicted. So I knew it would pay for itself, but it actually has done really well in year one And I think we've only been going around just over a year now, because actually, yeah, i saw their invoice the other day But it's been good. Now, two things it does bring them revenue. Yes, we give them a discount and Student Beans take a commission. That's fine, so there's less margin, but it's bringing a new audience as well to rocker, a younger audience and hopefully an audience that might mature with us throughout as they go into their professional lives. So that's been a great thing for us. I'd say that's probably going back to then quick wins. There's longer term things, but when I think about things, what can we do right now that can have immediate impact? That was one of them for us.

Speaker 2:

Fantastic. So let's talk a little bit more about those longer term goals. You've implemented quite a few different technology platforms and integrations over the last couple of years. That really will help you going into the future as well. What talks me through some of those big hitters that you've got involved recently?

Speaker 1:

Well, okay. So when I started advising Rocker that the first thing is we've got to build a business that can scale and digital tech is going to enable that. That is the only thing that can enable that. We're a distributed workforce. We have a lean operating model as far as we don't have traditional offices, even though we're London headquartered in a sense of that's our spiritual home We don't actually have an office in London. Everyone works from anywhere.

Speaker 2:

Was this a post COVID thing or was that how you operate?

Speaker 1:

No, it's always been it. I mean, really, it was a small business, so it never really. And because we sell bags and backpacks, we didn't really need their own physical bricks and mortar store. So as I came in to advise them and thought about the growth, it's like, well, i love a lean operating model.

Speaker 1:

Coming from an agency who had expensive offices in London, it was like, well, we can do the complete opposite. Let's not have offices. Let's not have offices. Let's use co-working spaces for workshops whenever we need them, but let's keep this lean. So, which means you've got to have sort of cloud based SaaS platforms. So introducing Google workspace was a big change to the business, going from traditional clumsy sort of pop emails to moving everyone to a cloud. It took a bit of time because they were sharing documents through email, not even having video calls. So having a centralized cloud platform like Google workspace that just brought all the apps together, that was a big change. It took a bit of work with the mindset and culture to get everyone on board because there was only around half a dozen people, but you're just trying to get them to get on board that we are going to grow and we're going to change. Yeah.

Speaker 2:

Nobody likes change, nobody likes make them work.

Speaker 1:

They don't really You can put them into it.

Speaker 2:

It will help your day to day. Come on, guys, get on board.

Speaker 1:

Exactly. The tech isn't there to take your job, it's there to enable you and give you more time to maybe do the thing you're best at. So that was a big thing. Also, having a completely SaaS platform that we can work from anywhere, that was key. I come from this new technology. I'm into plug and play technology and almost sitting a bit about. You know, tech is there for that. For now. It might change, we might implement it this year And we throw it away in year two or three. I have that full mindset of you know, especially because most platforms now are SaaS operated. There's no expensive upfront license fee or anything. So it's look, we're gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna plug in a new piece of software. It's gonna. I can see it working for a good year, maybe two years max, and then we're move. So getting that mindset into into the business was important. So, going back to the point about plug-and-play and Again that, that, that changed things because we suddenly were integrating Shopify into a QuickBooks were into, we integrated lots of other technologies, our customer services platform into into Again the customer services platform, rather than just having a telephone number and an email, traditional email address We bought you gorgeous. That's just an amazing piece of amazing platform probably cost us 500 bucks a month for both our US and UK brand and All our customer services team. Leslie and her team can can Answer every ticket, whether it's a social ticket, whether it's an email query, whether it's a phone call. It all comes into gorgeous. But that was fairly straightforward to implement it. You know it's all plug-and-play technology. As long as you're using sort of best-in-class sort of systems like Shopify, google, you know they're all gonna have integrations. So we've taken that approach Really, how we're changing this business and how we're bringing it, how we get it towards growth. Now I think your other part of your question was more of the long-term things. Now that there's more hardcore Why cool sort of where I know it's gonna take a lot longer to implement, and and the reasons why is because it's gonna be here for a lot longer.

Speaker 1:

I mentioned our accounting platform, that that's not easy. You can't just change accounting, that that that was a six-month change and there's reasons for that. It was, you know, we wanted to have a more online. We didn't want to be restricted with some of the More traditional type accounting software, so we wanted it all online, browser based, so that that that was. That was a transition. We actually changed account see practices because it was a good time for us to move up a level.

Speaker 1:

But then we start thinking about the more the things that are really going to change our business. So you know, you can't run a business. We're getting to the point where spreadsheets are getting pretty big and clumsy and if they break Then mistakes happen. So it was for me that One of the big changes that's going on, it's actually being implemented this year and it's taken You know, it's taken around three months to implement and it's gonna be around Six months to really get going.

Speaker 1:

It is inventory planner.

Speaker 1:

You mentioned them earlier.

Speaker 1:

I think they're the sponsor, probably why I'm here. That's a game changer. We're a point where stock, the purchasing of our stock, the finance, it's, it's it's we're becoming a much more bigger business. We need to, we need to use data in a better way. We've got to have better insights into this business, to how we operate and how we purchase, and traditionally the business has come out of, you know, purchasing on based on its gut, feel or instinct or what we feel is going to be right. But now we've got data coming into our business and that's going to be. That's going to be the next big change And because this business can't scale just on on on these Big spreadsheets and things anymore, you know we've got to move, move again.

Speaker 1:

You know our inventory planner is Was chosen because it integrates easily with with our main e-commerce stores Shopify Amazing And we've put some custom integrations with our B2B platform Fairly straightforward API integration. You know. So again, that for me that that that's a bit of a longer term piece of tech, but that will, i know that will. That will stay with us. That's not a throwaway piece of tech.

Speaker 2:

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Speaker 1:

So we sell our US business so we can't be called rocker in the US. We called Ori. It's named after our founders daughter, so we're called Ori London In the States. We set that up last year in 2022, in January, and we started trading in February. That took a while to set up and it was pretty painful. We looked at our tech ecosystem lots of plug and play, systems that could talk to the warehouse, with the warehouses, the marketplaces, etc. So installed all that.

Speaker 1:

That's been a challenge and we've been able to do that. So you can't apply the same model. So I've got that challenge ahead to help grow that, and I don't think we can grow it in exactly the same way. But, however, the e-commerce side of the US is a huge opportunity. If anything, it can be a higher channel split than the UK Of where I think it could go. So I've got to apply some of the all them learnings. Going back to the basics of pay per click, you know the Google shopping. We've got to apply all that back to the US right now.

Speaker 1:

That's a challenge for me. It's not a global challenge. I think risks to the business right now and we don't have any quams about our products. We don't have any quams about talking about this. Our products are made in China And there's a few reasons for that and They're made from recycled plastic materials or repurposed materials, and Some of the best materials and the components are made in China. That's. That's great in a sense of. You know, it keeps costs down but it does sort of Contradict maybe some of our sustainability credentials so that, and obviously with the global, the political sort of climate and the economic climate, certainly post COVID, it's impacted us. You know even China and their COVID lock downs Impacted us. So it's a risk to our business. So when we think about the global economics, we we are Trying to mitigate that risk. We're currently looking at other manufacturing facilities in Still in Asia Vietnam, cambodia just to spread risk.

Speaker 1:

So that's a key, key thing for us as a business for growth. That's a long-term thing. You know. It goes back to that was always part of when we helped develop. I helped develop the business strategy That was always going to be on our long term. We cannot keep all our risk in one in one country. It is silly and it goes back to even the front end of of The sales. We can't just do all ourselves in the UK. We were doing 10% of ourselves in Europe or through distributors in Europe. And Again, we can't do all ourselves in one channel, so we split the channels to DC. We can't do that ourselves in the UK. We we're splitting territories. We've gone to the US, we're going to the, we're going to Europe in a big way right now And so we're always looking to how do we spread that risk more across channels.

Speaker 2:

Of course and let's talk a little bit more widely about you know, fellow e-commerce merchants and entrepreneurs out there What are the major challenges that you think the industry in general is going to have to overcome over the next year, and what are the opportunities that maybe you could share, that people could potentially jump on as well?

Speaker 1:

I'm thinking how do we leverage AI? And I don't have the answer right now. Look, we're already using AI, if you think about it, with our advertising algorithms. So we leave in that. I AI is covered through meta and through Google, but there's it's really interesting what, what's going on with AI, whether we're using it for to develop copy or or create some of the ad you know, ad copy or Some of the marketing language. So I quite interested in how we leverage that over the the Year ahead. I watch how my sons I've got two boys who are sort Gen Z boys, teenagers, and they use an AI. They're so comfortable with it, they, they will that you know they designed, they showed me designs of a backpack done through mid-journey and manipulating the prompts Using chat, gpt as well. You know I can only I go back from my experience because I I being a designer and technologist from years ago that would have taken me weeks to get there and and these guys are just comfortable Doing it now, a lot of us, my generation, will scared of AI, but I Always worried about it.

Speaker 1:

You know we're thinking about displacement or it's gonna take jobs, but I I don't know. I don't think. I think it will, but it will also create jobs. I think it would change jobs. But there is symmetrical side to it. But you can't stop it. It's coming. Businesses can leverage that, i think, certainly econ businesses who can move quickly or more agile. So that's something. I think there is Opportunities around there.

Speaker 1:

You know, for me, digital is all about scale. So If you've got the right eco, you know, if you've got the infrastructure and everything, you can just scale, you know. Then The thing holding us back are things like Brexit. It's the boring stuff. Yeah, it's, you know, there's not. We could scow to the EU tomorrow and sell directs consumer to the EU tomorrow. What stops us is warehousing and VAT. You know, it's customs and duties and I there, the more political stuff that unfortunately hinder us, hinder growth and progress. Which is why we went to the US, by the way, because we just couldn't be bothered to work out Brexit. So we went to the US instead, because it was just easier to set up a business out there. So I think the opportunity is to look at your e-commerce stack, your whole digital sort of ecosystem stack, and think can we scale this?

Speaker 1:

Yeah definitely, and if we're not and scale means lots of different things Can we scale to a new audience? I mentioned student audience for us, so new audience, that's a scale. Can we scale to a new territory? I mentioned the USA. That scale It might have some pain on the way but it's scaling And, in actual fact, all the learnings, the technology has just gone over there And again there might be other channels. Can social channels things are I haven't even explored yet TikTok How do we use them? channels more, how do we leverage them? How do we explore, how do we use our social media channels more? I think and this is for me is where, when I think about growth, i'm always thinking where we can grow in a number of these different places. And it's just where. Do you think you can then just prioritize that on your roadmap of where you think you can make the immediate impact?

Speaker 1:

If that's what you're after.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, 100%. So we're running out of time. It's been such a fascinating conversation, peter. I just love loving your enthusiasm on everything. Before I let you go, i just need you to come up with like maybe two or three quick fire top tips that our audience can take away tomorrow. There's so much we could choose from, but what in terms of growth right now? what would your top tips be?

Speaker 1:

Growth will be about the technology making sure you've got the right technology to scale. So, first of all, is it all integrated? Can it increase at scale without perhaps increasing your overheads too much? You know you've got to have an exponentially amount of more people to help run them systems. It shouldn't do it. if it's done well, it should scale easily.

Speaker 1:

So I'm of the opinion and this probably goes back to the tip is be prepared to change all the time. It's been part of my life visual transformation, so you know whether that's when Apple designed. you know when the Apple Mac came out for graphic designers, it changed us. when CDs came out, when everything changes all the time. So don't be afraid to fail to put some tech in that doesn't work. get rid of it, you know, and swap it out. But you know, or be prepared, that this might only be a stopgap. This isn't the one for life. So that's my sort of probably biggest tip is put it in for a year or two, that's. you know you can't sometimes invest in the kit you want, or you don't have the manpower, you don't have the people or the headspace. but you know that this will do for now And then change it, because I think you know, certainly take advantage of these SaaS systems which operate on subscription models. I suppose that's one of the biggest things is.

Speaker 1:

the other tip is around growth, and growth isn't just about increasing that top number, it's about increasing. you know, you might have other KPIs in your business, so it could be increasing audience, a different audience type, attracting Gen Zs rather than, you know, traditionally your Gen Xs or millennials. It's also about territory growth. Can we scale into territories? So I always think about growth not just as that revenue number. Of course that's going to be important, but it's also where else can you grow? you know, and I think that's something we sometimes just focus on the revenue, don't think about where, the other points that we can grow, i suppose.

Speaker 1:

lastly, is that don't get? I'm pretty cynical of how do we say it? I love agencies, okay, so I love strategy, but sometimes you don't have to spend hours and hours and hours, you know, or days coming up with. be prepared to be agile And quick change, be prepared to fail. That is the lean operating model, you know. So what if we fail? If we trip up? we learn from it. ideally, we don't do it again. we sometimes do, but that's how we should always operate And that's what we're trying to do at Rocker And I think it's working.

Speaker 1:

I'm just interested in one number right now and that's the ROAS, the return on ad spend. Maybe next year or a year after, when I've got time, we can talk about attribution models, but right now they're part of the growth story, so we're in a growth story. If we turn it to a profitability story, then we can talk attribution models, and so that's I think, think about where you are in your probably digital maturity and where you are in your growth curve, because, yeah, i think that can have an impact on your thinking as well. Does that answer it? Yeah, definitely.

Speaker 2:

There are so many tips there. The whole conversation was really really interesting. Peter, thank you so much for joining us. I'm sure I'll get out loads from this, and to our listeners out there, thank you so much for listening to this episode. We learned so much from quick wins like implementing trust pilot and student beans, through to like leveraging your lean working, so making sure that your remote workers have the tool sets that they can do to use their job and do it properly, as well as integrating appropriate technology to allow business your business to scale.

Speaker 2:

And, most importantly for me, i think the key takeaway there was leaning into change, because changes that's the only certain in life is change. So head over to the usual podcast platforms to listen to previous episodes of the Lightning 50 podcast And don't forget right now listeners can get a free trial of Inventory Planner. Going to inventory-planercom. Inventory Planner gives you real-time insights to identify your slow moving products and hot sellers at a glance, helping you make informed decisions about your inventory and freeing up crucial cash flow. Inventory Planner never knowingly over buy or under buy, ever again.