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Case Study / 01 Unified Commerce
Connecting ad-spend with inventory levels stopped margin leakage and put $9.28 Million in EBITDA back into the business over a 31-month period.
Marketing is focused on scaling ad spend and pushing best-sellers, completely blind to what's actually sitting in the warehouse. Operations is trying to manage cash flow and gets the blame when shelves empty out mid-promotion, all while millions get trapped in dead stock because marketing isn't pushing those specific items.
Before using Grainline, this brand relied on manual spreadsheets for replenishment. By the time the ops team realized a core product was out of stock, marketing had already wasted thousands driving paid traffic to a page with nothing to sell.
On the flip side, perfectly good inventory was just gathering dust, eating up working capital, simply because marketing didn't know they needed to allocate budget to clear it out.
We start with a single, pragmatic change: linking real-time warehouse inventory to active ad campaigns. If marketing suddenly doubles the budget on a top-performing SKU, we automatically adjust the re-order forecast and trigger a purchase order before a stockout can even happen.
And if supply chain issues cause inventory to drop to dangerous levels, we pause the ads for that specific SKU. We physically stop the bleeding right there.
Here is what 31 months looks like when comparing connected systems against manual spreadsheets.
Cumulative Net Margin: Legacy vs. Grainline connected engine.
Wasted ad spend on out-of-stock items (Dead Clicks).
The difference between manual spreadsheets and the Grainline engine.
| Metric | Legacy System | Grainline Engine | Net Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
| Total PLA Ad Waste | $2.92M | $344.9k | -$2.58M Eliminated |
| Total Net Margin | $84.26M | $93.53M | +$9.28M EBITDA |
Heading into the summer rush, having supply and demand synced up led to a $1.02M swing to the bottom line in a single month—mostly from better margins and skipping out on ad waste.
An aggressive marketing push caused stockouts left and right. The old setup would have burned $237k on clicks for out-of-stock items, but having ads pause automatically saved the budget and protected $790k in margin.
Right before Black Friday, ignoring ad velocity during procurement tied up $767,500 in dead stock. That was capital meant for acquisition, just sitting in the warehouse.
The gap between marketing and operations is costing you money every day. We calculate exactly how much.