New Threads
How Beyond Expectations set up Thread Project for inventory management success
With Cin7, Xero, A2X and Shopify all working together seamlessly, Thread Project can manage an entire supply chain with just one staff member
Nearly everyone has a favourite t-shirt, or two. A faded print from a beloved band, a trusty piece of workout gear, an inside joke. But those prints — and those shirts, and other wearable or brandable apparel — have to come from somewhere, and it turns out that for something so common, the world of apparel supply and printing is surprisingly complex.
It's a world that's dominated by a few big players who manufacture the "blank" product that designs, logos and slogans get printed on, and hundreds of thousands of big and (more often) small players who do the branding.
This leads to problems. The big players make a lot of profit and consequently have a lot of power, incentivising them to keep prices high. Conversely, there's not much incentive to respond to small printer concerns, or to give them a cut of their sky-high profits.
It’s a thorny problem — one that Kiwi apparel company Thread Project was born to solve. They invite the people who print and sell t-shirts in as partners, co-operating in shared success as their business grows. What's more, their tees are created from the ground up to be ideal for the people who print and sell them.
It's a great solution, one that apparel printers and sellers love, but the model involves a lot of complexity. Improperly managed, this could ground a fledgeling business.
That's why Thread Project turned to software implementers Beyond Expectations.
Turning the page on an apparel project
Josh Page is a Founding Partner at Thread Project, part of the "rag-tag rebellion," making gear built to last, with a side of justice and a sprinkle of Kiwi grit. With a background in a series of successful businesses, including umbrella innovators Blunt, Josh knows the ins and outs of both branding and inventory. Together with the other Founding Partners, the team came up with a business that makes great tees and other apparel, and shares profit with decorators and sellers.
But it's a lot.
For instance, once a shirt is created — which is its own process, involving brainstorming among the Thread Project team, consultations and feedback with sellers, multiple rounds of back-and-forth with the factory — it’s shipped to one of the Thread Project’s warehouses. From there, it must be available for individual consumers on the Thread Project website, and for the Thread Project’s business customers, each of whom requires quoting, payment, and shipping systems.
This is the sort of complexity that simply can’t be managed with a spreadsheet, but thanks to a career spent dealing with various kinds of inventory systems, Josh could tell that leading inventory management software Cin7 was exactly what Thread Project needed to start as successfully as possible.
"We hadn't done the Cin7 Omni thing before, but after a bit of searching and speaking to a few different suppliers, it became clear that it was the platform of choice," Josh says. "The problem is, it was beyond me."
Happily, it wasn't beyond expert Cin7 Omni implementers Beyond Expectations.
"There's no way we could have done this without Beyond Expectations. Having experts who understand the capability of Cin7 has saved us hundreds and hundreds of hours of trial and error — the sort of thing that could sink a business, or make you go crazy."
A perfect fit
Despite being "quite savvy" at inventory management software, Josh realised that they'd need help to get the system set up right from the start. "I thought there must be some people who are specifically geared up to do implementation of a complex system based on our requirements. When I found Beyond Expectations, saw they'd won awards, and were closely connected with Cin7, the partnership just made sense. It was one of those things that was meant to be — and because my other business is called Beyond Usual, it was funny as well."
The Thread Project team met with Beyond Expectations, who took time to understand the project scope and make sure they were designing a system that was exactly what Thread Project needed.
It turned out that together, they were a perfect fit. Often, software implementers work on projects for mature businesses who are upgrading from a minimum viable product that's long since outlived the "viable" part, and is now choking off growth. But Thread Project, thanks to their experienced founders, wanted things set up to scale right from the start.
"One of the things I noticed with the guys from Thread Project from our very first interaction," says Beyond Expectations founder Peter Rowe, "was how structured they were in their approach. The founders have done a lot of work thinking about exactly how things work and they want them to work in their business."
Beyond Expectations mapped out Thread Project's requirements, and carefully mapped a software stack consisting of tried-and-tested solutions like Xero for accounts, A2X for eCommerce transaction accounting, Shopify for a customer-facing store, and Cin7 Omni for inventory management — including the optional modules for a WMS (Warehouse Management System) a B2B (business-to-business) portal — all of which combine to form a single source of truth.
"We implemented Cin7 as the main hub, and Xero for financials," says Beyond Expectations cloud software expert, Sharon Bolderson. "And at our suggestion, they took on A2X, which does so much heavy lifting, it's just a no-brainer for customers, and it’s had a huge impact on the accuracy and timeliness of Xero financial data.”
The implementation went from one to done in only a few months.
"It was fantastic working with Beyond Expectations"
Cin7 Omni's purpose is deceptively simple: it aims to tell sellers where inventory is in their systems, no matter how complex the system is, or how many channels they sell through.
This makes it perfect for apparel brands, who often have complex supply chains and a lot of different sales channels to keep track of. However, a system is only as good as the set-up will allow — and with more than 20 years in business, Beyond Expectations has Cin7 Experience in spades.
"It was fantastic working with Beyond Expectations," Josh says.
"They had a good level of listening to us and understanding what we needed to do — but they're also very good at assessing our level of understanding of what's going on with the implementation and the software!" Josh says. He explains that their ability to translate highly technical things is vital for IT companies; if clients can't understand the concepts or the language being used, the implementation will languish. But that was never an issue with Beyond Expectations; they took care throughout the process to make sure that communication was clear and well-understood.
These efforts made the implementation much simpler, and Josh says that's because Beyond Expectations always asked the right questions. "Beyond Expectations talked us through the process to make sure that they were delivering the right product for us. It would have been easy to go down the wrong path if we were doing it all ourselves."
"Without Beyond Expectations, we would've just hit a wall if I had to do it myself. Having my hands held and going 'it's OK, this is how we do it' — that reassurance was just super helpful."
One system that does the job of three people
— or many more
Part of the value Thread Project found from working with Beyond Expectations was that both understood that a little extra complexity at the start would actually simplify things.
A more traditional approach might have seen Thread Project using a spreadsheet-based stock management system, or Shopify for a B2B portal, and Josh admits that might have been quicker and cheaper to set up at the beginning. But the costs would soon begin to mount: "Then we'd need to hire someone to do the accounts, and reporting would be nowhere," Josh says. Conversely, their new system is fully integrated with billing and accounting, and Cin7 Omni's powerful reporting engine is there from the get-go.
"It's all integrated with Xero, and with our billing process, which means we don't need separate billing."
In fact, the way Beyond Expectations and Cin7 have set them up to succeed from the start means they're able to run their already substantial operation with… just one employee.
"We've got one full-time employee, Jonathan. He does pick-and-pack, he runs the Cin7 system, and he has a close relationship with Beyond Expectations," says Josh. "If there's any question around something he needs to do, they're just a phone or Zoom call away. They talk him through it, and he just carries on doing it."
“What’s important is that they can scale up from where they are right now, without adding lots of staff — the mindset is, the staff are there to automate as many workflows as possible.” says Sharon Bolderson.
This is what's great about Cin7 Omni, Sharon says: it enables businesses to grow without the choke-points — like data entry — that are so common to product businesses.
"That's the whole point with Cin7. If you get it in place and you get it right, and if you get more orders in, you don't have to employ more people just to manage those orders. You can let the system do a lot of that work."
Josh Page agrees. If they didn't have Cin7 and Beyond Expectations, he says Thread Project would need a pick-and-pack person, someone else to do loading, and another person for accounts.
"Jonathan gets an order pop up on the screen, and he can do the whole thing. Cin7 is connected to the Poste Haste courier system in a way that eliminates redundant data entry. Tracking and completion are updated in both Cin7 and Shopify, all without human intervention. It’s seamless.”
Near-omniscient product visibility, thanks to Cin7 Omni
Thread Project's Cin7 Omni-based system also gives them the ability to make predictions based on stock movements and overall demand. Like many things in life, T-shirt size sales can be graphed on a bell curve. For example, there is much less demand for very large shirts in sizes like 9XL, but there is some demand — and Thread Project wouldn’t be doing their job properly if they didn’t have some available. Being able to use Cin7 to predict demand means they don’t have warehouses filling up with old product that won’t sell.
Normally, this is a manual process based on guesswork. "We'd be at the point of re-ordering, thinking, 'gosh, we thought it was going to be different,'" Josh explains. "Now, we can start cross-referencing that data, get our baseline level, understand our bell curve, and buy what we need."
"We can extract any kind of data from behind the scenes. We had an AGM the other week and we ran a bit of a competition, asking the team: what do you think the top selling SKU is? And so we ran the query, and it's really quick to extract any little bit of data we might need."
"Having that level of visibility through the data and the reporting, I think is the best. Seeing how capable that is, I think that's going to be our biggest unlocker. There's no more shooting blind, going on gut instinct."
An apparel company that can accommodate growth
With their smart software stack already saving on other overhead costs, Thread Project are thrilled with the results of their implementation — and they say they're all set up for the growth they can already see coming in their Cin7 dashboard and custom reports.
"We're going to take this business offshore, we'll hit other markets, and we needed to factor in that growth. We've already outgrown our warehouse." As growth continues, Josh says, they'll have secondary premises; a pick-and-pack location, a storage location, and more. A simple system was never going to be able to handle that complexity, whereas Cin7 will be able to take the load without flinching.
"I've worked with a lot of different systems, been in the operations of a few different businesses, and having to do stuff twice, three times, bugs the heck out of me," Josh says. "Whereas now we have one place, one central source of inventory truth. The backbone of this business is built on a scalable, flexible system that lets us do what we want to do. We're doing this right, from the get-go."
In terms of value for money, the Thread Project team rate Beyond Expectations and Cin7 as "incredibly good." Not only have they saved on what could be multiple full-time roles, but having the systems in place from the beginning is almost priceless.
"We're not just thinking about the beginning," Josh says. "We're thinking about where it's going to be in four years. When it comes to value for money, it's well worth it. The right system pays dividends."
"There's no way we could have done this without Beyond Expectations"
With the implementation done, Thread Project is going from strength to strength, and the time they've saved is being poured back into the business and their community. They've already kicked off a project called "Local Legends," where they spotlight a decorator partner who selects a local business doing good work in their community, like a kitten orphanage in Tauranga. We design, the decorator prints on Thread Project apparel and collectively we highlight the local legend on our shared social media platforms and websites.
And behind all this success is, of course, Beyond Expectations: saving Thread Project time, money, complexity, and sanity.
"There's no way we could have done this without Beyond Expectations. Having experts who understand the capability of Cin7 has saved us hundreds and hundreds of hours of trial and error — the sort of thing that could sink a business, or make you go crazy," Josh says. "Without them we would've just hit a wall if I had to do it myself. Having my hands held and going 'it's OK, this is how we do it' — that reassurance was just super helpful."
Josh credits the experience and empathy of Beyond Expectations staff as being key to unlocking project success:
"Sharon from Beyond Expectations has been amazing. I've spent many hours on the phone and Zoom calls with her, and she's like a master wizard who understands everything. I don't think I've asked a question she doesn't know the answer to," Josh says.
Likewise, the Thread Project team are happy to recommend Cin7 as the foundation and source of truth for other inventory-centric businesses.
"It might seem like you're spending a lot of money on Cin7 — but the alternative is to pay a more expensive person, or two people, and then suddenly it's a lot more," Josh says. From his perspective, "Previous businesses took a lot longer to get off the ground, because you have to go on assumptions and guesses, which can be expensive mistakes. Actually ordering based on truthful data and visibility into trends is so much more valuable."
Josh closes by saying that he'd absolutely recommend Beyond Expectations to any inventory-based business looking to improve their systems — whether or not they know they need Cin7 yet.
"We've got one full-time employee. He does pick-and-pack, he runs the Cin7 system, and he has a close relationship with Beyond Expectations. If there's any question around something he needs to do, they're just a phone or Zoom call away. They talk him through it, and he just carries on doing it."
"Without Beyond Expectations, we would've just hit a wall if I had to do it myself. Having my hands held and going 'it's OK, this is how we do it' — that reassurance was just super helpful."
Chat with Peter Rowe, Beyond Expectations CEO, about how your organisation can get a result like Thread Project
"I'd 100 percent recommend Beyond Expectations to help businesses navigate the implementation of an inventory management system, something that's intensely complex."
"Beyond Expectations has always been great at being an interface — we say 'this is a problem we need to solve, we think it needs to do this,' and they can translate that back to us in a way that we understand, and implement it."
— Josh Page, Founding Partner, Thread Project