The State of Inventory Management
A Review of Rising Costs
Businesses worldwide have faced challenges from supply chain volatility and may continue to experience hardships going into 2024. Download the report and see how omnichannel selling has helped Katana customers increase sales orders despite economic uncertainty.
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About the sample data
Thousands of SMBs manage operations from sales to inventory on Katana’s cloud inventory platform — accounting for almost $2 billion in sales order value annually.
Industries and products explored
Businesses reviewed in this report have marked purchase orders as received and sales orders as done consistently with Katana in 2021 and 2023. Industries included in this report:
of all customers integrate Katana with accounting platforms like QuickBooks Online and Xero, relying on Katana as the central source of truth for all their key business data and operations.
of Katana’s customer base are direct-to-consumer manufacturers who use a range of e-commerce integrations like Shopify, BigCommerce, and WooCommerce.
Key insights and trends
Combining expert consumer and market research and data from real businesses, the report is concluded with actionable insights that can support businesses carrying inventory as they continue to navigate an unstable economy.
E-commerce boom
Leveraging both e-commerce and other sales channels is the key to achieving revenue growth. Businesses using a combination of e-commerce and other selling methods saw an increase of 40% in turnover from 2021 to 2022, with e-commerce accounting for over half of the total sales order turnover.
Learn why more and more businesses are implementing
e-commerce into their selling strategy
The cost of rising inflation
Inflation began to rise due to global supply chain issues caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, with inflation rates reaching 4.7% in 2021. By 2022, the economy had fared no better, and inflation reached 8% in the US. This report investigated 8,500+ SKUs and observed that prices had increased for 80.28% of SKUs during this period.
Learn how businesses have been affected by the Covid-19 pandemic, increasing inflation and interest rates
Prices surge for electronics
There was an increase in purchasing costs and sales order revenue for the industrial and technology industry, particularly for the electronics sub-sector. In 2022, consumer electronics produced a combined revenue of approximately $987 billion in the US, indicating a decrease of 4.4% compared to the preceding year due to economic slowdown, surging inflation rates, and increased energy prices.
Get an actionable checklist for navigating economic volatility based on the outlook for 2024