Inventory app for a Shopify craft supplies store
If you sell craft and hobby supplies on Shopify, you are watching hundreds of colourways, shade numbers and kit components, and nothing in your admin tells you which ones are about to run dry. Restoc is built to do that one job: a reorder point per SKU from your own sales velocity, your supplier's lead time and a safety stock buffer, an alert when a SKU crosses it, and a weekly list of what to ord
How a craft supplies store watches stock today
Most craft and hobby stores run the same three-part system. Shopify's inventory list, sorted low to high, checked once or twice a week. A spreadsheet with supplier names, case quantities and the date you last ordered. And memory: you know the cream 8/4 cotton moves, you know the floss distributor takes three weeks, and you know which blanks you always regret not buying twice.
That system holds until the catalogue grows. In this trade the SKU count climbs faster than the revenue, because what a customer buys is a colour, a shade number, a gauge, a weight or a size. One yarn base in forty colourways is forty rows to watch. Add embroidery floss, beads and findings, acrylics, patterned paper, resin blanks, needles and tools, and a store doing solid but not enormous numbers is tracking a thousand lines by eye.
Why it is harder here than in most catalogues
- Variants hide the problem. The product page still reads in stock, because thirty-eight of forty colourways are fine. The two that actually sell are at one and zero.
- Velocity is uneven across shades. Two or three colours carry the base. The rest tick over at a few units a month, so a single rule like "alert me under ten" is wrong in both directions: noise on the slow shades, silence on the fast ones.
- Stock sells in bursts, not evenly. A workshop, a pattern release or a maker posting your shade number clears a line in a weekend. An average-based reorder point gets reached after the burst, not before it.
- Lead times are long, lumpy and set by the supplier, not the SKU. Distributor minimums, dye lots, import waits and a making season that lands in the autumn mean the day you notice is already too late. You needed to notice three weeks earlier.
- The check is manual, so it slips. The week you are packing a wholesale order or shooting new product photos is the week nobody sorts the inventory list low to high.
The decision in front of you is not whether to buy a planning suite. It is whether the noticing stays a human task.
Setting Restoc up on a colourway catalogue
- Connect the store once
Restoc installs on Shopify through OAuth and reads your products, inventory levels and order history, with webhooks plus a scheduled sync job keeping it current. It is a web app: there is no mobile app and no browser extension.
- Set lead times by supplier, not row by row
Each SKU carries the vendor from its Shopify product, filled in on the scheduled sync and shown on the dashboard and the weekly report. A vendor lead times screen lists every distinct vendor in your catalogue, so one number covers every SKU from that supplier that has no lead time of its own. The mill base that takes 21 days and the bead supplier who ships in 3 get different numbers without you typing into hundreds of rows.
- Pick a sales velocity window
Choose 7, 14 or 30 days. The reorder point is calculated from that velocity and the lead time, per SKU, so a colourway selling four a day and one selling four a month are each measured on their own rate rather than on a store-wide number.
- Add safety stock for the lines that sell in bursts
A store-wide safety stock percentage sits on top of lead-time demand in the reorder point calculation, which is the buffer merchants add by hand for stock that does not sell evenly. The units it adds are shown as their own column on the dashboard, the weekly report and the CSV, so you can see what the buffer is doing instead of guessing at it.
- Read days of inventory remaining
Every active SKU shows current stock, days of inventory remaining and its reorder status on one dashboard, sortable by days remaining and reorder status and defaulting to soonest-to-stockout first. That is the view that answers "which shades are nearly gone" without sorting anything by hand.
What the catalogue gets once it is running
An alert when a shade crosses
When a SKU drops through its own reorder point, an alert fires by email, delivered through a background job built to be idempotent so one crossing does not mean four messages about the same colourway.
One list on order day, with the supplier on it
Once a week a report lists every SKU below its reorder point with a suggested order quantity, viewable in the app and exportable as CSV. Each line carries its vendor and its safety stock units, so the order is assembled from your own sales rather than from a walk round the shelves.
The buffer is visible, not buried
The safety stock percentage goes through the same tested reorder point function as the rest of the maths, and the units it adds are shown on screen, in the report and in the export. You can see exactly why a shade's reorder point sits where it does.
Slow shades stay on the screen
The reorder point formula is tested against the awkward cases a craft catalogue is full of: a SKU with no sales in the window, a short history, stock already at zero. Those shades still show their stock and status rather than dropping out of the view.
Alerts in the channel the restock happens in
From Growth up, a Slack incoming webhook you configure carries the same crossings alongside email, so a reorder lands where the rest of the store's work is discussed.
Capacity counted in variants
Plans track 200, 1,000 or 2,000 SKUs, with the cap enforced at sync time. A catalogue counted in colourways rather than in products has a tier sized for it.
Different settings for fast shades and slow tools
Pro adds custom reorder rules: a per-SKU sales velocity window override, for when the hero colourways and the hooks, needles and blanks should not share one setting.
Choosing a sales velocity window for craft stock
| Window | Fits | Trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| 7 days | Fast movers and the making season, when demand on a hero colourway changes week to week | One bulk order or a workshop buying ten skeins can lift the average and pull the reorder point up |
| 14 days | A middle setting for a mixed catalogue of steady sellers and occasional shades | Slower to react to a sudden spike than 7 days, quicker than 30 |
| 30 days | Slow and seasonal lines: specialist shades, tools, blanks, anything bought a few times a month | A genuine surge takes longer to show up in the number, so the safety stock percentage is doing more of the work |
Which plan a craft catalogue needs
Starter, $29 a month
Up to 200 tracked SKUs and one location. Reorder point per SKU, email alerts, the weekly report with CSV export and the days-remaining dashboard. Fits a focused range before the colourways multiply.
Growth, $59 a month
Up to 1,000 tracked SKUs, five times Starter's capacity, enforced at sync time, and Slack alerts through an incoming webhook alongside email. Built for the point where one base stocked in every shade pushes the line count past a few hundred.
Pro, $99 a month
Up to 2,000 tracked SKUs, everything in Growth, plus custom reorder rules: a per-SKU sales velocity window override, for when the fast shades and the slow tools should not share one setting.
What Restoc does not do for a craft store
We would rather you read this before you sign up than after.
- It does not understand kits as components. Restoc reads Shopify variants and their inventory levels. If you sell a beginner embroidery kit as one product, it is one SKU. The floss, hoop and fabric inside it are only watched if you stock them as their own variants.
- Safety stock is one store-wide percentage. It applies across the catalogue rather than per shade. If you want a different rate on resin blanks than on floss, that is not something to plan around yet.
- Vendor lead times fill the gaps, they do not overrule you. A vendor's number applies to the SKUs from that supplier with no lead time of their own. A lead time typed on a single SKU stays as you set it.
- It does not forecast a season. The reorder point comes from the velocity window you choose, the lead time in force and the safety stock percentage. It tells you what your recent sales imply, not what November will do.
- A shade with no sales in the window has little to compute from. A colourway that sold nothing in the last 7, 14 or 30 days will not generate much of a reorder point. Its current stock and status still show on the dashboard, so slow lines stay visible even when the maths has nothing to work with.
- One location per plan. Every plan covers a single location. If the online store and a bricks-and-mortar shop hold separate stock, that is not covered yet.
- Web app only. There is no mobile app and no browser extension. Alerts reach your phone by email or Slack; the dashboard is a browser page.
For a wider view of catalogues at the top end of that SKU range, the page on stores running 1,000 to 2,000 SKUs covers how the caps behave. If you are still doing the whole thing in a spreadsheet, the spreadsheet page covers what changes when an alert arrives instead, and the page for small-batch makers covers a catalogue that is still growing.
Questions
Does it watch every colourway separately, or just the product?
Separately. Restoc tracks SKUs at the Shopify variant level, holding the title, your own SKU code, the variant id, current stock, lead time and the computed reorder point, so each colourway gets its own reorder point and its own alert.
Do I have to type a lead time into 900 SKUs one at a time?
No. Each SKU picks up its vendor from the Shopify product, and a vendor lead times screen lists every distinct vendor in the catalogue, so one number per supplier fills every SKU from that supplier that has no lead time of its own. Set a lead time on an individual SKU when that line is the exception.
My shades sell in bursts. Will an average-based reorder point be too late?
That is what the safety stock percentage is for: it adds a buffer on top of lead-time demand in the reorder point calculation, and the units it adds are shown on the dashboard, the weekly report and the CSV. A shorter velocity window of 7 days reacts faster to a burst as well, at the cost of one big order skewing the average.
Can it handle kits and bundles made from components?
No. It reads what Shopify reports as inventory on a variant. A kit sold as a single product is one SKU; the floss, hoops or blanks inside it are only tracked if you stock and sell them as their own variants.
How many SKUs can I track?
200 on Starter, 1,000 on Growth and 2,000 on Pro, with the cap enforced server-side at sync time. Count variants rather than products: one base in forty colourways is forty lines. The pricing page has the full comparison.
Can the alert go to Slack rather than email?
Email alerts are on every plan. Slack alerts, delivered through an incoming webhook you configure, are part of Growth and above, and run alongside email rather than replacing it.
Can I send the weekly list straight to my distributor?
The weekly reorder report lists the SKUs below their reorder point with a suggested order quantity, the vendor and the safety stock units, viewable in the app and exportable as CSV. You take it from there: Restoc does not place orders or talk to suppliers.
What does it read from my store, and what is kept?
Products, inventory levels and orders, plus the sync bookkeeping needed to show when a sync last ran. Sales quantities and dates per SKU are stored with the Shopify order reference, and no customer names, addresses or payment details are stored. The security page sets out the full list and how deletion works.