Stitch Labs: Our 2021 Review

Stitch Labs’s main claim to fame was its ability to help you make business decisions quickly. The software put everything you needed in one place so it was easy to look at your business holistically.

Ironically, though, the service was a bit disjointed in the way it went about offering that holistic solution. In fact, the service was aptly named since you basically had to “stitch” together multiple services and integrations to get the most out of your service. That said, if you could get all of the integrations you needed, Stitch Labs was a great choice for running a just-in-time system.

Here's everything we knew about Stitch Labs before it was acquired by Square.

We thought just-in-time retailers were sure to love Stitch Labs’s centralized approach to inventory management.

With Stitch Labs software, multichannel ecommerce sellers could track their inventory across all their channels. This gave you a better idea of how your company was doing as a whole and helped you quickly make decisions about your inventory.

Stitch also let you draft purchase orders and send them the second you received a low stock alert. This feature helped you maximize profitability by reducing the time you spent reordering products and fulfilling sales orders—you got your new inventory faster, so you could keep up with demand without overspending on product storage.

However, we didn’t recommend Stitch Labs to small businesses just dipping their toes into inventory management. The software was way too expensive for most Main Street businesses, and it was often overly complicated for first-time inventory managers.

From our perspective, Stitch Labs had two major flaws: its price and its integration-heavy approach.

Before it was acquired by Square, Stitch Labs didn’t display any of its prices on its website. Instead you had to request a quote—an almost sure sign that the price was higher than most business owners were willing to pay. And before the prices were removed, we clocked an entry-level Essentials plan at $799 per month. That put the service out of price range for many small-business owners.

Stitch was also extremely proud of the fact that it wasn’t an all-in-one solution. To get the most out of that centralized inventory management dashboard, you had to add integrations for Amazon, Shopify, ShipStation, Xero, and any other services or marketplaces you used. Since some of those integrations cost extra to use, it only added to the exorbitant price of the Stitch Labs platform.

Another thing we noticed was that while Stitch Labs was generally fast, it did slow down significantly from time to time. That wasn’t usually a big deal, except when it was (like when you'd try to reorder your product as quickly as possible to maximize the efficiency of your just-in-time system). We also thought the platform's reporting was less detailed than we've seen from other providers.

As we previously mentioned, Stitch Labs was not currently listing its prices for its inventory software. So we couldn’t say for sure how much you would’ve paid if you’d gone with Stitch Labs. However, we do know a bit about the features available on each plan.

Assuming the most recent pricing listed on Stitch Labs’ website was accurate, the Essentials plan would’ve started at $799 per month. That’s significantly higher than more full-bodied inventory software options like Cin7 or TradeGecko.

So for small businesses on a budget, Stitch Labs was definitely not the best option. And even if you had a higher budget, you probably would’ve been better off getting an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system that could do more at a lower price.

Stitch Labs offered many of the basic features you'd expect from a cloud-based inventory software:

• Multi-location tracking: Helped you monitor and transfer your inventory across multiple warehouses
• Bundling: Let you sell groups of products together as a single item
• Currency conversion: Allowed you to sell in multiple currencies while managing in your home currency
• Reporting: Delivered insights into your company’s performance

In addition, though, Stitch offered advanced stocktaking options, including reconciliation reports (for those times when your physical inventory counts didn’t match the counts your software said you should’ve had).

Stitch also helped you track unit costs for all your products, and it didn’t exclude landed costs like freight fees and tariffs. This increased the accuracy of your cost of goods sold (COGS) calculation and enhanced your insight into your company's performance.

Stitch Labs provided a platform where you could see and track your inventory, purchase orders, invoices, and sales orders from all your channels in one place. This helped you see your business as one cohesive unit and make the best possible decisions for your company in as little time as possible.

What's more, tracking all your sales channels and reordering in one place was extremely convenient. Instead of receiving low stock alerts from five different sales channels, you could get a single alert anytime your business’s inventory was running low. You could also create supplier profiles, check on invoice payments, and monitor shipping windows with minimal effort.

It also gave you the option to customize branding and logos on your packing slips and invoices so you could present a unified brand image to all your vendors and customers. And of course, your financial information could be easily imported to your QuickBooks or Xero account via integrations.

With Stitch Labs, you got a lot of flexibility to sell to your customers in whatever way made sense for your business.

For starters, you could sell your products in multiple stores within the same marketplace. This allowed you to customize multiple Amazon, Magento, or Shopify storefronts to appeal to different customer types, which boosted your sales. You could even allocate specific amounts of inventory for each channel, ensuring that you had enough to meet customer demand for those stores.

And speaking of stock allocation, Stitch also let you create VIP customers within your system and set aside stock specifically for them. That way, you could continue to provide the best possible service to the customers who were the most loyal to your business.

Your sales reps also didn’t have to worry about overselling your product since Stitch Labs software gave you real-time insights into your inventory catalogue. It stayed up to date, perpetually syncing with the cloud so you knew exactly how much you had to sell at any given time. And if you did happen to oversell, it was no big deal—Stitch also let you sell against incoming stock, accept preorders, and manage backorders.

The flexibility didn’t stop with sales features, though. You also got a fair amount of order management features to help you fulfill customer orders quickly and efficiently.

In addition to splitting orders (when items from an order are stored at different locations) and routing orders from the nearest warehouse (for faster delivery), you could also set shipping criteria that let you control when orders were shipped based on how long the order had been in your system.

Retailers could also use Stitch Labs software to establish hold periods, which gave time for customers to change or edit their orders before fulfillment. Many customers appreciated the flexibility, and it gave business owners a little extra time to get their inventory shipped out.

Like we said before, Stitch Labs relied heavily on integrations to provide its centralized and holistic view of your business. However, it wasn’t compatible with every business service on the market. Here are the most commonly used integrations you could use with Stitch:

• Accounting: QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop, Xero, inDinero
• B2B and wholesale: Shopify Wholesale, SPS Commerce, Inventory Planner
• Ecommerce: Etsy, ShopifyPlus, Shopify, BigCommerce, Magento, WooCommerce
• Marketplaces: Amazon, eBay, Etsy
• Point of sale: Shopify POS, Square
• Shipping and fulfillment: ShipStation
• Third-party logistics (3PL): Fulfillment by Amazon, FedEx Supply Chain, ShipBob
• Warehouse management: Deposco, Scout
• Other: PayPal

While Stitch Labs was compatible with the most popular sales tools and ecommerce platforms, it's important to note that it offered no compatibility with any customer resource management services. We think it had to do with Stitch’s focus on being a top-class inventory service rather than an all-encompassing behemoth of a business platform.

Stitch Labs offered some of the best customer service in the inventory industry. We spoke with several other Stitch users and found that many (if not all) had predominantly positive experiences working with Stitch Labs representatives.

But don't take our word for it. Check out these excerpts from Stitch Labs reviews left by other business owners who used to use the software:

Stitch Labs was a cloud-based platform for inventory management, but it has since been acquired by Square. The service offered a centralized dashboard where you could manage your products across multiple sales channels and warehouse locations. While the software was relatively easy to use and users raved about the customer service, the platform is no longer available to new customers.

Unfortunately, Stitch Labs is no longer accepting new customers, and it’s due to be shut down in Spring 2021. On the bright side, the Stitch Labs team will be actively developing Square’s inventory management offering in the future, so we can (hopefully) expect to see more good software from them in the future.

We certainly think so. Inventory management software is more accurate than manual tracking, and in many cases it offers real-time data syncing so you know exactly what's going on with your business at all times. That process translates to greater savings and smarter business decisions.

Stitch Labs had a lot to offer in the way of inventory and order management. It provided a cohesive dashboard that combined data from every sales channel across your business, giving you an accurate idea of your inventory and your company's performance.

The problem? Since Stitch didn’t publicly list prices, it was likely too expensive for most small businesses to afford. It also relied heavily on integrations from other services, which made setting up your service more complicated.

But if you were running a just-in-time inventory system, these drawbacks might not have been serious enough to keep you away from Stitch’s streamlined inventory management approach.

Sadly, Stitch Labs is no longer available. The good news? You can find tons of other top options with our guide to the best inventory management platforms.

Disclaimer

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.