Verve Wine gains actionable inventory insights 96% faster with Genie

“It seemed impossible to find an effective inventory management solution as a wine company on Shopify – until we discovered Genie. With Genie’s stock insights, we can place informed purchase orders and drill into our store’s dynamics in minutes.” – Ronald Morgan, Director of Retail Operations and Purchasing at Verve Wine

About 

Verve Wine is a prominent wine retailer known for its curated artisanal wine selection from small, limited-production winemakers. Since its founding in 2016, the brand has built a strong online presence and three physical locations in New York City, San Francisco, and Chicago, now catering to over 50K quality-seeking wine enthusiasts nationwide.

Challenge

Replenishing limited-supply wines with reliable, real-time inventory insights

As a brand offering limited-supply wines coveted by collectors of all kinds, Verve Wine’s business hinges on accurate, up-to-the-minute stock data. Knowing which bottles sell best allows Ronald Morgan, Director of Retail Operations and Purchasing at Verve Wine, to replenish them on time so customers can secure their favorite selections before batches are gone.

“Some of our wines come out annually, while others release once in a lifetime and sell out in 30 days,” explains Ronald. “We need precise, real-time inventory data to get as many customers as possible the bottles they hoped to add to their cellar.”

In just eight years, the company sold over 19,000 unique SKUs. About 17,000 of these SKUs were past editions of the same established wine lines. While Verve could never restock the same wines from a past year’s unique harvest, each sale held key information about customer preferences and buying patterns to inform purchase orders. To maximize sales opportunities, Ronald needed a way to quickly and easily organize all of Verve’s inventory data into practical insights.

Ronald tested a few inventory management platforms that promised to achieve his goal. However, none of them offered what Verve Wine was looking for:

• Automated inventory analysis: To get up-to-date stock data, Ronald historically had to download and consolidate inventory reports. This manual process not only took 100 hours annually but also posed the risk of losing important information.
  
  
• Actionable, intuitive inventory view: Shopify retains only 90 days of inventory history, which is removed for SKUs that are archived after selling out. To preserve as much data for future analysis as possible, Ronald created a workaround using “dummy” stock adjustments to keep Verve’s 17,000 products available with actual on-hand items. He needed to tailor this view to evaluate current stock and historical performance without mixing up the two. 

Genie’s solution addressed both of these needs.

“Managing a wine store online is notoriously difficult – every wine is unique, and different customers value different batches, so you need to have accurate inventory insights at all times.”

Solution

Benefit #1: Accurate, detailed inventory insights on autopilot

Genie seamlessly compiled all of Verve Wine’s inventory data into a robust overview. Instead of manually consolidating reports, Ronald now uses the brand’s inventory table – directly connected to Verve’s Shopify store through Genie – for real-time insights into every product’s stock levels, projected stockout date, and total sales. Even better, he pulls this information in seconds.

This granular, reliable summary empowers him to make quick, informed decisions about Verve Wine’s purchase orders, ensuring timely restocks of the most coveted wines. For example, Ronald can easily tell if there’s a spike in demand for a new rosé label and order more bottles before the supplier runs out. This way, he captures every sales opportunity, offering customers the wines they’ve been eyeing for months.

Benefit #2: Intuitive, customizable inventory views 

Ronald no longer needs to manage previous wine batches on Shopify to salvage valuable information – Genie automatically stores all inventory data for X months after items are sold out and archived. This comprehensive summary helps Ronald analyze the historical performance of every wine label and gauge whether customers would likely buy again in the future.

Plus, he derives these insights with ease — and without worrying about mixing up current and past stock data. Using Genie’s 32+ filter options, he creates and saves intuitive inventory views tailored to his needs. For example, he can exclude wines from previous years to prioritize current low-stock items for his next purchase order.

Best of all, Ronald has customized Verve’s inventory table even further by integrating every SKU’s Shopify tags on Genie. He can now drill into stock and sales dynamics based on attributes like wine type, producer, region, and grape – getting actionable data to optimize Verve’s inventory management practices with confidence.

“With Genie, we’ve completely changed the way we manage inventory. We can replenish items that are running low and identify what wines should be on our radar based on sales from years past. All this information is intuitively presented on Genie – and we can customize it even more.”

Results

Increasing inventory purchase confidence by 15% with Genie 

Today, Ronald doesn’t worry about time-consuming data consolidation or unintuitive stock views. Instead, he relies on Genie’s inventory table – a customized, single source of truth offering real-time insights into Verve Wine’s historical performance and stock levels.

With Genie, Verve Wine seamlessly meets demand for every expertly crafted wine, all while achieving some notable wins: 

• 96% faster inventory insights
• 10% more cost-effective inventory management
• 15% increase in inventory purchase confidence 

Moving forward, Ronald will continue to streamline Verve Wine’s inventory processes with Genie’s purchase order capabilities and upcoming Quickbooks integration.

“The entire experience with Genie, from integrating our Shopify data to tailoring our inventory view to our needs and communicating with the team, has exceeded our expectations.”

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