Why I Stopped Trusting My Gut and Started Tracking Everything
After 13 years running a product company, I learned the hard way that intuition fails at scale. Here's how that lesson became the foundation of VNDLY.
Why I Stopped Trusting My Gut and Started Tracking Everything
It was a Tuesday in October. I was standing in our warehouse, staring at a pallet of ceramic vases that had just arrived from the supplier in Portugal.
The problem? I hadn't ordered them. Not this month. Not last month. These were from a PO I'd placed six months ago, back when I was convinced they'd be our holiday bestseller. I'd forgotten about them completely. Meanwhile, the SKUs that were actually selling were out of stock, and I had three angry wholesale customers calling my phone.
That was the moment I realized something painful. My gut - the same gut that had built a business from scratch - was now actively working against me.
The Gut Works... Until It Doesn't
When you're small, intuition is a superpower. You know your products. You know your customers. You can walk the warehouse floor and feel when something's off. That instinct got me through the first five years.
But around year six, something shifted. We went from one container every six months to one a month. Then two. Then four. By year ten, we were moving 75+ containers annually across three warehouses and two continents.
At that scale, your brain can't hold it all. I'd think I remembered how many units of SKU-2847 we had in Warehouse B. I'd swear I did. But I was wrong. A lot.
The Numbers Don't Lie
43% of small businesses track inventory manually or not at all. The average US retail inventory accuracy? Just 66%. When your gut is your system, you're flying blind more than half the time. Source: Meteor Space
The Spreadsheet Phase (AKA the Denial Phase)
My first attempt at fixing this was Excel. Color-coded tabs, pivot tables, the works. It felt organized. It looked professional. It was also a disaster waiting to happen.
Here's what actually happened with those spreadsheets:
- Version chaos. Three people had "the master file." None of them matched.
- Stale data. By Wednesday afternoon, the Monday morning numbers were already wrong.
- Hidden errors. A mistyped formula in row 847 meant we thought we had 400 units of something we had 40 of.
- No history. When a number looked weird, there was no way to see who changed it or why.
I spent more time managing the spreadsheet than managing the inventory. And I still got surprised by stockouts.
The App Phase (AKA the Disappointment Phase)
Next, I tried inventory management apps. TradeGecko, then others. Some were decent. Most were built for a different kind of business - either too simple for a growing product company or so complex they needed a dedicated IT person.
The real issue? None of them gave me the full picture.
I'd have sales data in one place, purchase orders in another, and warehouse stock in a third. Connecting the dots was still on me. The apps digitized my chaos but didn't actually solve it.
The Catch
Most inventory software treats stock as a static number. But inventory is a story - it's sales velocity, lead times, seasonal curves, and supplier reliability all moving together. A number on a screen tells you almost nothing without that context.
What "Tracking Everything" Actually Means
When I started building VNDLY, I didn't want another dashboard with numbers. I wanted a system that thinks the way a business owner thinks.
That meant tracking the things that actually matter:
1. Not just stock levels, but stock trajectory
Knowing you have 500 units today is useless if you're selling 50 a day and your supplier takes 3 weeks to deliver. What matters is: will you run out before the next shipment lands?
VNDLY's stock projection charts show exactly this. A visual timeline of your stock level, with reorder points and stockout warnings built in. Not a number. A picture of your future.
2. Not just what sold, but when and how fast
Sales volume without velocity is meaningless. 100 units in December is very different from 100 units spread across the year. VNDLY tracks demand patterns, not just totals, so you can see which products are accelerating and which are fading.
3. Not just supplier prices, but supplier behavior
Every supplier says 2-week lead time. Very few actually deliver in 2 weeks. We built supplier performance tracking so you can see actual lead times, not promised ones. When you're planning purchases, reality beats promises every time.
4. Not just revenue, but real margins
Landed cost changed everything for us. The product cost $12 from the factory. But by the time it cleared customs, paid freight, duties, and handling, it was $18.50. That's not a detail. That's the difference between a profitable SKU and a loss leader.
VNDLY tracks freight and landed cost per product, per order, per shipment. So when you look at margins, you're seeing the real number.
See how VNDLY handles this. Free 14-day trial, no credit card.
Try VNDLY free →The 73% Problem
Here's a stat that still haunts me: 73% of small businesses experience stockouts during peak demand periods. Not because they're careless. Because they're guessing.
When you don't have real demand signals, you order based on hope. Hope that last year's pattern repeats. Hope that the big customer reorders. Hope that the container arrives on time.
Hope is not a strategy. And it's expensive.
The average small business loses $23,000 annually to stockouts alone. That's nearly half of all inventory-related losses. And it's almost entirely preventable with proper tracking and forecasting. Source: SBORI Study
From the Founder
The hardest thing I ever did was admit that my instincts weren't enough anymore. I'd built the business on feel - on knowing what customers wanted before they did. But at 75 containers a year, feel becomes liability.The ceramic vases were just the symptom. The disease was that I was making $50,000 decisions based on memory and mood. That's not entrepreneurship. That's gambling. What changed everything wasn't software. It was the discipline to write things down, measure them, and let the data argue with my assumptions. Sometimes the data won. Sometimes I still went with my gut. But at least it was a conversation, not a monologue.
What This Means for Your Business
You don't need to be moving 75 containers to hit this wall. I've talked to business owners with 50 SKUs who feel the same chaos I felt with 500.
The inflection point isn't about size. It's about complexity. The moment you have:
- More than one warehouse or storage location
- More than one supplier with different lead times
- More products than you can mentally track
- Customers who expect you to know availability instantly
...your gut becomes a bottleneck. Not because you're bad at this. Because you're human.
The Three-Step Shift
If you're still running on intuition, here's how to start the transition without drowning in software:
Step 1: Pick your top 20 SKUs.
Don't try to track everything on day one. Pick the products that drive 80% of your revenue. Track their weekly sales, current stock, and average lead time. Just those three numbers.
Step 2: Calculate a simple reorder point.
(Weekly sales × Lead time in weeks) + Safety stock. That's it. When stock hits that number, order. No gut required.
Step 3: Review monthly.
Compare your projections to reality. Were lead times accurate? Did sales match expectations? Adjust. The goal isn't perfection - it's slightly better guesses every month.
Why VNDLY Exists
I didn't build VNDLY because I love software. I built it because I couldn't find a tool that thought about inventory the way a product business owner does.
Most inventory tools are built by engineers who've never packed a box. They're clean, they're logical, and they're completely disconnected from the reality of running a warehouse.
VNDLY is built from the opposite direction. Every feature started as a real problem I faced:
- Partial shipments because suppliers never send complete orders
- Landed cost tracking because freight was eating our margins
- Supplier performance because "2 weeks" meant 2-6 weeks depending on the moon
- Stock projections because I was tired of surprise stockouts
- Demand forecasting because seasonal spikes kept catching me off guard
Visual timeline with reorder alerts and stockout warnings
Multiple models that learn from your actual sales patterns
True per-unit cost including freight, duties, and handling
Actual lead times, on-time rates, and price history
The Real Cost of Guessing
Let's be honest about what "trusting your gut" actually costs:
- Stockouts that send customers to competitors. 69% of shoppers will buy elsewhere when you're out of stock. Source: Salesforce
- Overstock that ties up cash and warehouse space. The average SMB holds $142,000 in excess inventory.
- Emergency orders at premium freight rates because you didn't plan ahead.
- Staff overtime because rush orders disrupt the whole week's workflow.
- Your sanity because you're constantly firefighting instead of strategizing.
Combined, poor inventory management costs the average small business $47,000 per year. That's not a software budget. That's a leak in your business.
The Discipline of Data
I'm not saying throw out your instincts. Your gut got you this far. It knows things no algorithm can know - a supplier's tone on the phone, a customer's changing preferences, a market shift before it shows up in the numbers.
What I'm saying is: give your gut better information.
Data doesn't replace judgment. It informs it. When you know your actual sales velocity, your real lead times, and your true margins, your instincts become sharper, not weaker.
The best decisions I've made in business came from intuition plus information. Not one or the other. Both.
Start a 14-day free trial of VNDLY - no credit card required.
Henrik Åberg is the founder of VNDLY. Before building inventory software, he spent 13 years running a bootstrapped product company, scaling from 1 container every 6 months to 75+ annually. He still makes gut decisions - just better informed ones.