Inventory management app for Shopify pet supply brands
Restoc is a reorder-alert app for Shopify stores selling pet food, treats, litter, toys and accessories, built for catalogues of 50 to 2,000 SKUs. It watches stock against each SKU's own reorder point and tells you by email or Slack before a flavour or a bag size runs out.
What a pet supplies catalogue does to stock watching
A pet brand's SKU count is mostly variants. One dry food line becomes four proteins in three bag sizes. A chew becomes six counts. A harness becomes five colours across four sizes. The catalogue reads as forty products in Shopify's product list and behaves like four hundred in the stockroom, and only a handful of those lines carry the revenue.
That shape makes three things hard.
Demand here is habitual, not impulsive
The customer who buys a 12 kg bag every six weeks is on a schedule. If the bag is out on the day they come back, they do not browse your other proteins. They buy the same bag from whoever has it. Running out of a repeat-purchase line is a real hit, and it is the kind of hit you only notice weeks later in the reorder rate.
A store-wide low-stock number tells you nothing
Set one threshold across the catalogue and you get noise. Ten units of a slow-moving ceramic bowl is three months of cover. Ten units of your top salmon treat is four days. The number that matters is not units, it is how many days of selling you have left at the rate the SKU is actually moving.
Your suppliers are nothing alike
A local treat baker turns an order around in a week. A palletised food brand ships on a container schedule and quotes you six weeks. The same stock level is comfortable on one line and already late on the other, so the reorder point has to carry the supplier's wait, SKU by SKU.
Many pet catalogues still run all of that as a Monday spreadsheet export. It is correct the morning it is made, stale by Wednesday, and it depends on somebody remembering to make it during a week that has packing and customer email in it.
How Restoc will work on a pet catalogue
- Connect the store
Installing will run over Shopify OAuth. Restoc reads your products and inventory levels and backfills the last 30 days of sales at install, so velocity is on screen from the first day rather than accruing for weeks. After that it keeps up through Shopify webhooks plus a scheduled sync job. It is a web app only, with no mobile app and no browser extension.
- Enter the supplier wait for each SKU
Lead time is merchant input, per SKU, because only you know that the kibble ships on a pallet and the bandanas ship next day. You then pick the store-wide sales velocity window: 7, 14 or 30 days. Pro adds a per-SKU override of that window.
- Let the engine set the reorder point
The reorder point is calculated per SKU from the sales velocity in your chosen window and that SKU's lead time. No safety-stock theory to configure, and nothing for you to recalculate when a line speeds up.
- Read days of inventory remaining on the dashboard
One row per active SKU, carrying your own SKU code, current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status, sortable so the soonest to stock out sits at the top. That is the view where a 2 kg bag with eleven days of cover and a 12 kg bag with ninety sit side by side and stop looking the same.
- Take the alert when a SKU crosses
When a SKU crosses its reorder point, Restoc fires an alert by email, sent through Amazon SES, and by Slack webhook on Growth and above. Delivery runs through an idempotent background job, so a crossing sends once rather than three times, and the dashboard keeps a record of what fired and whether it was delivered.
- Order from the weekly report
The weekly reorder report lists every SKU below its reorder point with a suggested order quantity. View it in the app or export it as CSV, which is the file you paste into a distributor order form.
What earns its keep in pet supplies
The fast movers raise their hand first
Days of inventory remaining is calculated from each SKU's own sales rate, so the salmon treat that turns over weekly reaches its reorder point long before the novelty toy that has sat since spring. The long tail stops drowning the signal.
Every flavour and bag size is its own SKU
Variants are tracked individually, each with its own stock, its own reorder point and its own alert. Selling out of the 2 kg while the 12 kg is fine is a normal week in pet, and it reads as one line, not a whole product gone red.
The dashboard opens at the urgent end
A pet catalogue of several hundred variants is too long to read. Sorting by days of inventory remaining puts the soonest to stock out at the top, so a scan of the first few rows is the whole stock check.
Freight lead times are an input, not an assumption
You type the wait in days per SKU. A six-week food line gets a reorder point six weeks tall, and the week-turnaround treat line gets a low one, from the same calculation.
Slack gets it to whoever does the ordering
On Growth and above, alerts post to an incoming Slack webhook alongside email, so the crossing lands in the channel where your fulfilment conversation already happens instead of an inbox nobody reads on a packing day.
One ordering pass a week, written down
The weekly report is a buy list with suggested quantities and a CSV export, which gives a repeat-purchase catalogue a standing ordering ritual that does not depend on remembering to rebuild a spreadsheet.
Priced for a store, not a planning department
Starter is $29 a month for up to 200 tracked SKUs, Growth is $59 for up to 1,000, Pro is $99 for up to 2,000, or ten months' price paid yearly. Each carries a 60-day free trial and is billed by Shopify on your Shopify invoice.
Picking a velocity window for food, treats and hard goods
The one decision worth thinking about is the sales velocity window, because it sets how twitchy the whole thing is. Restoc offers 7, 14 or 30 days, store-wide, with a per-SKU override on Pro.
- 7 days reacts fastest. Worth considering if your mix is dominated by repeat food and treat lines that sell every day and your suppliers are quick. It will also react to a one-off bulk order from a groomer, which can pull a reorder point up for a week.
- 14 days is the middle setting: steady enough to ignore a single big basket, quick enough to notice a line taking off.
- 30 days smooths hardest. Sensible when much of the catalogue is accessories and hard goods that sell in ones and twos, where a fortnight of data is too thin to mean anything.
Because the install backfills 30 days of sales, any of the three windows has history behind it on your first look, rather than a month of waiting before the numbers mean anything. If your proteins behave nothing like your toys, that is the case for Pro's per-SKU override rather than a compromise setting across the whole store.
What Restoc does, and what it does not
| The job | Where Restoc stands today |
|---|---|
| Know when a flavour or bag size needs reordering | Built. A reorder point per SKU from sales velocity and your lead time, with an alert on crossing |
| Have usable numbers in the first week after install | Built. The install backfills 30 days of sales history, so velocity and reorder points are there from the start |
| See how much cover a SKU has left | Built. Current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status per active SKU, sortable by urgency |
| Send alerts to email or Slack | Built. Email on every plan through Amazon SES, Slack webhook on Growth and above, delivered by an idempotent background job |
| Hand a buy list to a supplier | Built. Weekly reorder report with suggested order quantities, in-app and exportable as CSV |
| Track batch or expiry dates on food and treats | Not built. Restoc stores stock, lead time, sales quantities and dates, not batch or best-before data |
| Forecast a seasonal spike before it arrives | Not built. The calculation looks back over a 7, 14 or 30 day window, it does not project demand forward |
| Raise and send purchase orders to a distributor | Not built. The weekly CSV is the handoff |
| Split stock between a shop and a warehouse | Not built. Plans cover one location |
| Check stock from a phone in the stockroom | No mobile app. Restoc is a web app, with no browser extension either |
Plans for a pet catalogue
Starter, $29 a month
Up to 200 tracked SKUs, one location. Email alerts, the weekly reorder report with CSV export, and the days-of-inventory dashboard. $290 a year if you pay yearly, ten months' price for twelve. A 60-day free trial.
Growth, $59 a month
Up to 1,000 tracked SKUs, five times Starter's capacity, enforced at sync time. Adds Slack alerts through an incoming webhook alongside email. $590 a year if you pay yearly. A 60-day free trial.
Pro, $99 a month
Up to 2,000 tracked SKUs, everything in Growth, plus custom reorder rules: a per-SKU velocity window override for when your food lines and your hard goods need different settings. $990 a year if you pay yearly. A 60-day free trial.
Questions
Does Restoc handle size and flavour variants separately?
Yes. Each active SKU is tracked on its own, with its own current stock, its own lead time, its own reorder point and its own alert. A 2 kg bag crossing its reorder point is one alert about one SKU, not a flag on the whole product.
Will the dashboard be empty for weeks after I install?
No. The install pulls the last 30 days of sales alongside your products and inventory levels, so sales velocity, days of inventory remaining and reorder points are calculated from real history on your first visit. After that, webhooks plus a scheduled sync job keep it current.
Can it track best-before or batch dates on pet food?
No, and we would rather say so plainly. Restoc stores titles, your SKU code, the Shopify variant id, current stock, lead time and the computed reorder point, plus sales quantities and dates. There is no batch or expiry field, so date-sensitive rotation stays outside the app.
Does it forecast demand for seasonal lines?
No. The reorder point is calculated from a backward-looking sales velocity window of 7, 14 or 30 days plus your lead time. It tells you when a SKU has crossed its point at its current rate. It does not project a spike that has not started yet.
Can it split stock across a shop and a warehouse?
Not today. Every plan covers one location, so stock is watched as a single pooled figure per SKU. If you run genuinely separate locations with separate reorder decisions, Restoc is not the right fit yet.
How many SKUs can I track?
200 on Starter, 1,000 on Growth and 2,000 on Pro, with the cap enforced server-side when your store syncs. Pet catalogues count variants, so take your variant count rather than your product count when you pick a tier.
Where do the alerts go?
Email on every plan, sent through Amazon SES to your account address until you change it in alert settings. Growth and Pro add a Slack incoming webhook alongside email. Delivery runs through an idempotent background job, so one threshold crossing sends one alert per channel, and the dashboard records what was sent.
Is there an app for the stockroom floor?
No. Restoc is a web app, with no mobile app and no browser extension. The alert is the thing designed to reach you away from a desk, which is why email and Slack carry it.