Akikumo: Merchandising & Ops

Before Akikumo, merchandising was mostly educated guesses. A lot of gut, not much real structure behind how we were ordering or organizing products. Akikumo tightened that up, now it’s a mix of instinct and actual data.

The time savings are obvious. We hit a ShipHero sync issue, and instead of digging through a ton of product histories in Shopify and cross-checking with ShipHero, I checked Akikumo and saw the inventory spike right away. This would have taken me some time to investigate and analyze, but now its turned into a quick check.

The biggest thing is you can trust what you’re looking at. It’s your real store data. No wondering if something’s off. Everything’s just clear. When you’re running lean and juggling drops, promos, and collections, that kind of clarity makes a big difference.

I’ve enjoyed using Akikumo. It surfaced issues I wouldn’t have caught quickly on my own, like products getting paid traffic while out of stock, unpublished inventory with revenue potential, and inconsistencies across the catalog. For a unique business model like mine, it’s also been helpful in gauging continued demand for sold-out styles. As someone who’s spent years in merchandising and e-commerce, what stood out is how clearly it highlights where revenue opportunities are being missed.

Before Akikumo I was running two stores mostly on instinct. I had no real road map for buying and genuinely didn't realize how messy my data was inconsistent sizing and variant names were everywhere from when we migrated from Square. I wouldn't have known to clean any of it up until Akikumo surfaced it for us. We cleaned up both stores in about an hour. Without the report, that would have taken forever...if we'd ever done it at all. What I love most is that it makes us feel like we're growing up. We're finally running our business like the bigger brands do...with real data, real decisions, not just guessing. That's what this app does for small business owners like us.