Inventory app for a Shopify stationery or paper goods store
If you sell cards, notebooks, planners or wrapping paper on Shopify and want an inventory app that tells you when to reorder, that is the job Restoc is built for. It reads stock and sales from your store, works out a reorder point per SKU from sales velocity and the lead time you type in, and alerts you by email or Slack when a SKU crosses it.
How stationery brands watch stock today
Shopify tells you what you have. It does not tell you how fast a design is moving, or how many days the stock on the shelf will cover.
So most paper goods brands fall into one of three habits:
- The Monday scan. Open the inventory list, sort by quantity, squint at the bottom of it. Fine at 80 SKUs. Skipped at 600.
- The spreadsheet. Export the catalogue, keep a hand-written reorder level in column F, update it when you remember. The numbers age faster than you can retype them.
- The shelf. You notice the box of A6 blanks is thin while you are picking an order. By then the reprint is already two weeks late.
None of these are stupid. They are what you do when nothing is watching the stock for you. The problem is that they all depend on a person looking, and a stationery catalogue is exactly the kind of catalogue a person stops looking at properly.
What makes a paper goods catalogue hard to watch
Stationery has a particular shape, and it is the shape that breaks manual stock checks.
Many SKUs, each one small
One card range is one SKU per design, and often per finish: foiled, plain, boxed set of six. A notebook line multiplies by cover, by ruling, by size. The catalogue grows by shape rather than by revenue, so a few hundred SKUs is normal for a brand run by two people.
The slow steady sellers are the trap
A design that sells two a week never appears in a report sorted by revenue. It still runs out. And because it is quiet, nobody notices it is gone until a wholesale order comes in and you cannot fill the line.
The reprint is the real clock
A digital short run and a litho reprint with foiling and a special stock do not wait the same number of days, and minimum order quantities mean you reorder in batches rather than topping up. The useful question is never "is this low", it is "will what I have left cover the wait".
Seasons compress the window
Christmas cards, back to school, Valentine's, Mother's Day, dated diaries. Velocity on the same SKU can be flat for ten months and then move several times faster for three weeks. A reorder level you set in March is the wrong number in November, and a dated product that arrives after the season is stock you carry rather than stock you sell.
Setting Restoc up for a stationery catalogue
- Connect the store
Restoc installs through Shopify OAuth and pulls your inventory levels and sales history, then keeps them current through Shopify webhooks and a scheduled sync job. You do not import a spreadsheet of designs.
- Type in the lead time per SKU
This is the number only you know: your printer's turnaround plus delivery plus the day it sits in the hallway. Set it per SKU, so a digital reprint and a foiled litho run carry different clocks.
- Pick the sales velocity window
Choose 7, 14 or 30 days. Thirty days suits a steady card range. Seven is the honest window when a season is actually moving. On Pro you can override the window for a single SKU when one design behaves nothing like the rest.
- Choose where the alert lands
Email alerts are on every plan. Growth and Pro add Slack through an incoming webhook, which is where it belongs if reordering is a shared job rather than yours alone.
- Work from the weekly report
Each week the report lists the SKUs below their reorder point with a suggested order quantity, viewable in the app and exportable as CSV, so the print order is a file rather than a retyped list.
What matters when you print in batches
A reorder point per design
Not one low-stock number across the whole range. Each SKU gets its own point, worked out from its own velocity and its own lead time, so the quiet designs are held to the same standard as the hero ones.
Days of inventory remaining, on one screen
The dashboard shows current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status for every active SKU. That is the number you want before you commit to a print run, and it is the number Shopify's inventory list does not give you.
The alert fires on the crossing
Not on a round number you guessed last spring. When a SKU crosses its reorder point, the alert goes out through a background job built to be idempotent, so one crossing means one message rather than a repeat every hour.
Slack for a shared reorder channel
On Growth and Pro, alerts post to an incoming webhook you configure, alongside email. Useful when the person who checks stock and the person who places the print order are not the same person.
A CSV your printer can read
The weekly reorder report exports as CSV with the SKUs below their point and a suggested quantity. Paste it into the order, or keep it as the record of what you decided that week.
Caps sized for a real card catalogue
Tracked SKUs run to 200 on Starter, 1,000 on Growth and 2,000 on Pro, enforced at sync time so you always know which designs are covered.
Where the reorder point comes from
| Input | Where it comes from | Why it matters for paper goods |
|---|---|---|
| Sales velocity | Your Shopify sales history over a 7, 14 or 30 day window | Gives a quiet design a reorder date instead of leaving it to be noticed |
| Current stock | Inventory levels read from Shopify | One figure per variant, so each finish and each size stands on its own |
| Lead time | You enter it per SKU | A digital short run and a foiled litho reprint do not wait the same number of days |
| Reorder point | Calculated per SKU from velocity and lead time | The point where remaining stock just covers the wait, which is when the order has to go in |
| Days of inventory remaining | Shown per active SKU on the dashboard | The number to look at before committing to a minimum order quantity |
What Restoc does not do, plainly
We would rather you find this out here than after installing.
- It does not forecast. Restoc calculates from the sales you have already made, over the window you choose. It will not predict your Christmas, and it does not build a seasonal plan. What it will do is shorten the window you pick when the season starts moving, so the reorder point keeps up with it.
- It does not raise purchase orders. No supplier records, no order sending. You get the list, the quantity and the export; the print order stays yours to place.
- It is a web app. No mobile app and no browser extension. Alerts reach your phone by email or Slack.
- Plans cover one location. If your stock sits across a studio and a fulfilment partner as separate Shopify locations, say so before you sign up.
- Slack is on Growth and above. Starter sends email alerts only. We have put that in the plan rather than in the small print.
Questions
Does it track every card design separately?
Yes. The dashboard shows current stock, days of inventory remaining and reorder status for each active SKU, and the reorder point is calculated per SKU. A design is not folded into its range.
How many SKUs can I track?
Up to 200 on Starter, 1,000 on Growth and 2,000 on Pro. The cap is enforced at sync time, so you know which SKUs are being tracked rather than discovering a silent gap later.
Can I set a longer lead time for a litho reprint than for a digital run?
Yes. Lead time is entered per SKU. The sales velocity window is a store-wide setting of 7, 14 or 30 days, and Pro adds a per-SKU override of that window for designs that move unlike the rest.
Can the alerts go to Slack instead of my inbox?
Slack alerts, through an incoming webhook you configure, come with Growth and Pro and run alongside email. Starter sends email only.
Will it tell me how many 2027 diaries to print?
No. Restoc does not forecast demand and will not size a print run for a dated product. It tells you when the stock you have stops covering your lead time, which is a different and smaller question.
What happens when a season makes a quiet design move fast?
Shorten the velocity window. A 7-day window prices in the last week's rate rather than averaging it away across a slow month, so the reorder point moves up with the season.
Is there a mobile app?
No. Restoc is a web app, with no mobile app and no browser extension. Alerts reach you by email or Slack.
What does it cost?
Starter is $29 a month, Growth $59 and Pro $99, each with a 60-day free trial, billed by Shopify on your Shopify invoice. Paying a year at a time is ten months' price for twelve months.