When a brand like Chubbies gets big, it can’t run on spreadsheets. On an episode of Honest Ecommerce, co-founder Kyle Hency laid it out perfectly. He described investing in an ERP as the moment you take all the chaotic exercises happening in different spreadsheets and systems and put them into one unified platform. It’s what lets you manage inventory and orders as they flow from your website, through fulfillment and logistics, and finally into your financial reporting.
Most brands don’t start there. As Josh Fischer explained on Ecommerce Coffee Break, merchants typically get started with a simple stack, maybe Shopify, QuickBooks, and a bunch of Google Sheets. They stitch things together. But as they grow, they hit a wall. This ad-hoc system becomes the bottleneck. Fulfilling orders is slow, they don't have a clear view of inventory across different warehouses or channels, and getting accurate financial reports is a nightmare of manual data entry. This is the pain that pushes a growing brand to look for a real back-office system.
This is where an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system comes in. Sharoon Thomas, the founder of Fulfil.io, has made the point on shows like Limited Supply and The eCommerceFuel Podcast that an ERP is the central nervous system for a multi-channel brand. It’s not just another piece of software. It’s a foundational change that creates a single source of truth. Your orders, inventory levels, warehouse operations, purchasing, and accounting all speak the same language because they live in the same place. This is what allows for the kind of automation and efficiency you need to scale from seven to eight or nine figures.
For a long time, this meant a massive, complex project with a platform like NetSuite. As discussed on Ecommerce Conversations, these systems are incredibly powerful, capable of running massive, complex businesses with both online and offline components. They handle everything from financials and CRM to multi-channel order management. For a brand with the scale and complexity of Chubbies, which operates in retail, wholesale, and direct-to-consumer, a robust, all-in-one system like this makes perfect sense. It provides the infrastructure to manage the entire business.
But that monolithic approach can feel intimidating. Sharoon Thomas argues that many of these big ERP projects fail because they aren't built for the speed and flexibility that modern e-commerce brands need. He built Fulfil.io as a more nimble, e-commerce-native alternative that integrates tightly with platforms like Shopify out of the box. This represents a different path to the same goal. Instead of a single, massive system, it acts as a central operations platform designed specifically for direct-to-consumer and wholesale merchants. It focuses on solving the core operational problems, like inventory and order management, without forcing you to change every single part of your business at once.
The core lesson isn't about choosing a specific tool. It's about recognizing when improvised systems are holding you back. Whether it’s a giant like NetSuite or a more modern solution like Fulfil, the objective is to build a scalable operational backbone. It stops you from being a person who manages spreadsheets and frees you up to be a person who builds a brand.