CGETC’s Inventory Management Made 'Odoo'-able with a Comprehensive ERP Solution

eCommerce is one of the backbones of the American economy. Every day, millions of consumers purchase products online and receive those goods within weeks or even days. Today, Amazon.com is the biggest eCommerce platform in the world, providing a site for sellers across the globe to deliver products to American consumers—from home goods and art to clothing and food items. Many companies outside of America choose to outsource their order fulfillment to Amazon through companies such as CGETC.

CGETC is a multifaceted company that fulfills and ships goods for businesses outside of the U.S. - especially Korea - as well as for its own eCommerce site. For the past 21 years, the company has helped these out-of-country companies deliver products to North American consumers. Furthermore, the company’s own eCommerce business - Accessory Geeks - sells products from over 600 companies. CGETC has three warehouses in Southern California and one warehouse in Georgia, as well as offices in Korea, the Philippines, and the U.S. It also offers sales and inventory management services, including marketing strategies, to help Korean companies expand their reach into the American market. As CGETC continues to grow, it needed comprehensive ERP software to help manage its multi-faceted business operations. Odoo, it turns out, was the right fit.

Prior to using Odoo, CGETC “used just about every inventory management software and system in the last 21 years,” Vice President Karen Kang explains. The company used software such as ChannelAdvisor, OMS ERP, Netsuite, and even an in-house developed system, but found that all of these options were lacking one aspect or another that they needed. President and Owner David Byun explains that as an eCommerce company, CGETC has to do a lot of API integration with various marketplaces. The previous inventory management software the company tried using were not matching its needs:

As an eCommerce seller, we want to be in front of everybody. Certain software, for example ChannelAdvisor, they're really good at connecting with marketplaces, but what they are not good at is inventory management. Certain software, they’re good at inventory management, but they're not good at marketplace integration. And as we grew, we needed inventory management, order management, and warehouse management, and so forth and so on.

Throughout its 21 years in business, CGETC had exhausted almost all of its options for inventory management within its price range. Larger-scale alternatives such as Salesforce were simply too expensive for what the company was looking for. Finally, CGETC came across Odoo as a solution that addressed its needs that weren’t being met previously at a competitive and more affordable price point. As David explains, “Odoo is the best of what’s out there as far as scalability and flexibility.”

In 2019, CGETC officially switched over to Odoo’s ERP system. David and Karen say that while their implementation was daunting and not without its challenges, it was ultimately no more difficult than any other data migration project. A factor that made the transition smoother and less stressful was Odoo partner Brainvire’s involvement with CGETC’s implementation. The duo applauds Brainvire for being extremely flexible and accommodating with the company's needs, stating that the partner’s support made a significant impact in their experience switching over to Odoo.

Over the past five years, CGETC has noticed firsthand the benefits of Odoo’s features. David explains that, in his opinion, inventory management - specifically inventory tracking and inventory history - is one of the strongest features that Odoo offers. This specifically has helped all facets of the company’s business, from eCommerce to fulfillment and distribution. David admits that during their implementation, he almost gave up hope that the transition would be worth it. At the time, the amount of data the company had to transfer over was overwhelming. But looking back and comparing today to six years ago, he explains that CGETC has increased its customer base by “easily 1000%, and the number of shipments by also a lot,” thanks to Odoo. David reflects on the impacts of their decision to switch over to the comprehensive ERP:

[Now that] we went through this process, we can take on more challenges. If we had not transitioned, and not migrated, and not decided to move over to Odoo 6 years ago, I don’t know how we would process all these orders and manage all these warehouses and inventories and customers and different challenges as we do now.

Odoo’s software specifically allows CGETC the ability to continue growing and expanding into new markets. Karen explains how the platform itself shows the company possibilities and methods to make its workflows more efficient than they previously thought possible:

There is flexibility. If there's something that isn't working or something new we want to implement, I have the confidence to ask [Brainvire]...If something isn’t working, we can figure out a way. It opened up a door for improvement, and using Odoo has really helped us imagine things that we couldn't have before. It just feels like there's more things we can do.

When asked to describe Odoo in a word, David gives two: capable, and scalable. Odoo has proven to be a valuable asset to CGETC in its continued growth and mission to help companies from Korea and other countries reach success in the American market.