Where can you find an excess of $60k per store? On your shelves.

About ERBA

We work with a multi-location retailer in California named ERBA that recently unlocked over $60k per store per month in excess inventory by reducing aging and slow-moving SKUs. This story covers how, using Happy Buyers at two of their stores, ERBA was made aware of all the inventory they had in stock that was NOT making them money. As a result, they were able to free that cash up off the shelf and reinvest it into the business.
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Los Angeles, California
Happy Buyers
4
Retail, Delivery

Excess inventory = cash you can’t access

Before utilizing Happy Buyers, ERBA was making inventory decisions based on weekly POS data exports. Spreadsheets on spreadsheets, like so many other retailers do. 

They also believed that the more SKUs on the shelf, the more options for consumers; they expected that would hit the most amount of interest across a broad range of customers.

This is not entirely flawed thinking, but the store strategy has to be very specific for it to make sense and keep sales velocity high. That last point is the most important.What good is product diversity if the product doesn’t move?

If you find yourself in the same predicament, you’ve now just inherited a bunch of aging inventory. What happens to aging inventory?

HEAVY discounting. Sales with zero profit, or worse, negative profitability. 

We used to track our inventory with complicated spreadsheets, updating stock levels, calculating turnover rates, and finding old stock by hand. It was a lot of work and easy to mess up, which often meant our data wasn't accurate and our stock management wasn't very efficient. Creating reports for meetings or planning took hours of data entry and double-checking.

Devon Wheeler
CEO of ERBA

Identify the problem and solve it immediately

Happy Buyers runs intense equations on an hourly basis of your sales data. We are looking for sell-through of SKUs, velocity of sales per SKU, inventory on hand vs out of stock inventory, and so much more.

This is simply not something that can be reproduced manually without a full-time data scientist running hourly exports of POS data (and even then, this job is just too overwhelming to do well).

Using our platform, ERBA was able to identify over $50k worth of inventory that was over 30 days old, with much of it aging 90+ days. Some of that inventory comprised entire brands, some just specific SKUs in the lineup.

“Happy Buyers' predictive analytics gave us spot-on demand forecasts, which helped us keep our inventory just right. This meant we avoided having too much or too little stock, making our inventory management more efficient and saving us money.”

By identifying the SKUs that needed to go, ERBA reclaimed that investment every month afterward. That’s hard cash that goes back into the business, to bring in more customers through marketing, to bonus out high-performing budtenders, to expand locations, or even just to put in the vault in case more hardships arise in the future.

How does that $60k break down?

“Since we started using Happy Buyers, we've cut down a lot on old, unsold inventory. Their advanced analytics and customer insights help us match our stock better with what the market wants.

Happy Buyers' targeted marketing tools have boosted our conversion rates and increased our quarterly revenue. Their detailed and customizable reports are incredibly helpful. Now, we can easily monitor performance metrics, track sales trends, and forecast demand more accurately.”


The Results

Erba | The Wood's

$418,538

Saved from Q1 ‘23 to Q4 ‘23

19%

SKU count reduction. Reduced by 211 SKUs

76%

Of inventory now
less than 30 days old

Erba | Venice

$528,378

Saved from Q1 ‘23 to Q4 ‘23

16%

SKU count reduction. Reduced by 230 SKUs

88%

Of inventory now
less than 30 days old