Inventory management software company Cin7 has grown from Kiwi upstart to global business. Now that it’s climbed the mountain, it’s blazing a path for Kiwi retailers.
Founded in 2012, Cin7 is one of New Zealand’s leading SaaS success stories. It is a full-service inventory management system, providing businesses of all sizes with the kind of systems and capabilities usually limited to huge corporations like Walmart or Amazon.
“When you first start a business, it’s pretty easy to manage your inventory,” says David Leach, Cin7 CEO. “Many businesses start off manually keeping track of their products in spreadsheets, but this can create a number of operational problems down the track.
“What Cin7 provides is a sophisticated software system that helps businesses safely scale up as they add multiple sales channels, enter new geographies, add more product SKUs and/or increase their sales order volume.”
Cin7 centrally tracks the location and quantity of products (i.e. inventory) in real time and enables efficient fulfilment of sales orders. It also provides insights to businesses, which allow them to effectively plan their ordering and production.
Take a wholesaler of crops with one farm and an international fashion retailer with warehouses around the world, for example. They have their own unique forms of complexity and needs for managing products throughout the supply chain, but neither business could rely on a person walking through warehouses, manually updating spreadsheets for an accurate view of where everything is.
Whether a business’s complexity comes from holding lots of different products, selling in multiple locations, or a complex supply chain, Cin7 provides a simple view for businesses that need to manage inventory, without the extra time and possibility for error that comes from manual systems.
But Cin7 does more than just inventory management. It also has capability for point of sale (POS), payment processing and order fulfilment. Together, they form an integrated system that connects with third party systems like accounting or eCommerce. Instead of having to reconcile data from multiple systems, Cin7 acts as a consistent, single source of truth.
“It’s crucial for retailers, wholesalers and e-commerce businesses to be able to manage and sell their inventory effectively, and we provide best-in-class options to do that for businesses of all sizes, not just the big guys,” says Leach.
Based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, Cin7 is now a truly global company, with offices in six countries, and customers in more than seventy-five. Over $60 billion NZD in gross merchandise value flowed through the Cin7 platform over the last six months, and that number is set to grow massively in the next year.
In 2021 Cin7 acquired two more inventory management businesses, DEAR Systems and Orderhive. This allowed the company to add capability for manufacturing businesses and high-volume e-commerce sellers, enabling it to grow towards its goal of being the global leader in inventory management. It’s part of the growing trend of Kiwi tech businesses expanding outwards and growing their horizons.
“To date, we’ve been a bit of a dark horse among Kiwi tech companies,” says Leach. “But we have one of the best success stories. Cin7 is the mission-critical heart of nearly 8000 product sellers across 75 countries — including over 700 in New Zealand alone. “
Azure sky thinking
A huge part of Cin7’s success has come from its close collaboration with Microsoft. Cin7 has been hosted on Azure since its inception, and the platform has provided the backbone of the company’s exciting growth. The key, the company says, has been Azure’s scalability.
On big shopping days like Black Friday, Azure provides everything that Cin7 and its customers need to handle the surge in demand. Azure can instantly scale up capacity, meaning that Cin7 can provide customers with confidence in their service, no matter how big the demand, and how many orders they receive in a day.
“The Azure platform gives Cin7 the ability to deploy our entire infrastructure at the click of a button,” says Trevor Leybourne, Cin7 CTO. “We can recreate all our Azure resources and create additional regions at will. This extends our availability to customers with reduced latency, and increased reliability.”
Security is another key benefit of being hosted on Azure. Cyberattacks are a rising risk for businesses, and the security features that Azure provides helps to mitigate the danger. The security offered by Azure means Cin7 can be confident in the services it offers to its customers, which supports its growth and creates further customer trust in their relationship.
“With our Azure-powered abilities, we can exceed customer expectations and beat the competition — whether we’re dealing with a predictable event like Black Friday, or unforeseen spikes in demand,” says Leybourne.
The company’s collaboration with Microsoft is about more than just Azure – Microsoft helps connect Cin7 with other partners like Aware Group and Parallo, both of which have provided specialist support for Cin7. The two businesses are also working together on building skills pipelines for tech jobs, which is especially important right now, as the tech sector struggles with a skills shortage.
Building a staircase for others
Cin7 has been a Kiwi success story in its own right, and now it’s helping other Kiwi businesses expand their own horizons.
Over the past two years the Covid-19 pandemic has fundamentally changed how businesses operate. For a growing number of product sellers, getting e-commerce and multi-channel selling right is incredibly important — and by empowering businesses with the systems they need to operate internationally, Cin7 is helping many companies survive, and thrive.
One such business is Hop Revolution, a business based in Nelson growing hops, a key ingredient for beer production. Hop Revolution ships its product to the US, UK and European markets from its two hop farms.
Hop Revolution doesn’t have many different products (they started with just four), but add in a delicate product that needs to be prepared within moments of being picked, just before being shipped around the world through different distribution centres, and you get a complicated supply chain.
Hop Revolution implemented Cin7 very early in its journey, preparing early for growth, instead of waiting for it to happen. That meant that when the business needed to scale up, Cin7’s advanced capabilities were ready for them. When Covid-19 disrupted supply chains worldwide, Hop Revolution had perfect visibility of where its products were, and could communicate that easily to customers.
“We’re really thrilled to be part of the story of companies all over the world,” says David Leach. “And we’re playing an increasingly big part — over $60 billion NZD in gross merchandise value flowed through the Cin7 platform over the last six months, and 38 percent of Cin7 customers grew their sales by 30 percent or more, despite the pandemic. That’s the kind of success we enable for our customers, and in turn that’s been enabled by Azure and our relationship with Microsoft.”
A rising tide
“Cin7 is a great success among New Zealand’s tech sector, and was recently recognised at the Microsoft Partner Awards,” says Matt Bostwick, Partner Director at Microsoft New Zealand. “It’s a perfect example of the benefit of working collaboratively in the tech sector. We love that we’re not just Cin7’s tech partner, we’re a true partner, helping however we can.”
“A rising tide lifts all boats” may be a cliche, but that doesn’t mean it’s not true. In Cin7’s case, its collaborative approach — with Microsoft, inside the company, and with its customers — has paid off hugely for everyone involved, and it’s only set to continue.