Author: Flieber

What minimum order quantity actually represents in ecommerce planning

Minimum Order Quantity, or MOQ, is commonly described as the smallest quantity a supplier is willing to sell. That definition is accurate but incomplete for an ecommerce operator. In practice, MOQ represents a hard boundary on how demand uncertainty can be converted into inventory decisions.

For most mid market ecommerce businesses, demand is forecasted probabilistically while inventory is purchased discretely. MOQ is the point where that mismatch becomes visible. You are forced to...

An order management system (OMS) is supposed to bring order to chaos. In theory, it centralizes orders, synchronizes inventory, and ensures customers get what they bought, when they expect it. In reality, for many omnichannel businesses, the OMS becomes another layer of complexity. One more system teams depend on but don’t fully trust.

As brands expand across ecommerce, marketplaces, wholesale, and retail, order flows multiply. Each channel introduces different rules, fulfillment paths, and service-level expectations. What used to be a simple “receive...

Contribution Margin: The Profit Metric Most Businesses Misunderstand

Most businesses believe they understand profitability. They track revenue, watch gross margin, and celebrate top-line growth. Yet many still struggle with cash pressure, weak inventory performance, and growth that feels harder than it should be. The disconnect often comes down to one misunderstood metric: contribution margin.

Contribution margin is not an accounting abstraction. It is a decision metric. It tells you what actually happens after a sale occurs and before fixed costs enter...

Inventory turnover ratio is often presented as a basic operational KPI, but for modern e-commerce and retail businesses, it plays a much bigger role. It sits at the intersection of inventory management, cash flow, and growth.

At a fundamental level, inventory exists to support sales. But inventory is also one of the largest consumers of capital in most businesses. Every unit sitting in a warehouse represents cash that has already been spent and cannot be used elsewhere until that unit is sold. The inventory turnover ratio helps answer a critical...

Imagine waking up to discover that just 17 of your 220 SKUs generated 80% of your profits. For Flieber CEO Fabricio Miranda, this was one of many harsh reality checks in his past e-commerce career.

From that moment on, he began to manage his brand as a portfolio of products, carefully considering the lifecycle phase of each one to maximize growth and profitability

Because the truth is, the steps that got you to early success with a couple of products, aren’t enough to build an enduring brand. As a product matures, you need different strategies to stay...

As an online retailer, you know that managing your inventory levels efficiently is becoming ever more critical to your bottom line.

You can’t afford stockouts, but you also can’t risk tying up your capital in excess inventory. You have to find that Goldilocks “just right” number for each SKU. 

One of the best ways to do that is to figure out your optimal inventory to sales ratio.

In 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic gained momentum, direct-to-consumer (DTC) brands experienced incredible growth. In fact, sales across DTC brands in the US saw a 45.5% growth increase. At face value, that may sound like a beautiful thing. But ongoing challenges with the supply chain meant that many brands struggled to deliver on that demand.

It’s human nature to want to control outcomes and reduce risks.

In today’s market, it’s hard to find a multichannel retailer that hasn’t experienced the pains associated with at least one supply chain challenge.

With one foot in e-commerce and the other in capital markets, Amazon brand aggregators are raising billions of dollars with the goal of creating new household names and products, while adding increased value to shoppers.