How RestockPro Saves Mile High Online 20+ Hours a Week

Every business has its own story, but Mile High Online's is something special.

The family run (and woman and veteran-owned) eCommerce business based in Monument, Colorado, started out in 2016 as an overstock wholesaler. Six years later, Mile High Online is a rapidly growing third-party Amazon reseller that also manages its own private label brands and operates as a full-service Amazon agency.

Aside from an incredible amount of drive and determination, how has this small but mighty team, which has backgrounds in financial advising, military officer training, microbiology, and space defense, been able to do it all?

We recently caught up with Mike Lehman, Operations and Logistics Manager at Mile High Online, to hear more about how this company found success on Amazon. We also heard how Mike uses RestockPro to solve the inventory inefficiencies that were threatening its growth on the marketplace.

Meet Mile High Online

While Mile High Online started out with a physical retail location, it found selling exclusively online to be more lucrative and soon focused its efforts there. The omnichannel seller launched on Amazon in 2018 with its first private label brand, MHO Containers.

It later partnered with a local cosmetics distributor, one of the largest in the country, to wholesale its products. Brand management was soon to follow.

"The MHO team pitched that to the company and said hey, we can brand manage you and we can take you onto the Amazon platform for the first time because, at this point, that company had only done distribution and retail,” Mike shared. “And to this day, we’ve just really proven that concept and that model for them, especially through the pandemic.”

Today, the thriving business, owned by Lori Rayl, Abby Miller, and Parker Rayl, provides Amazon services to brands and manufacturers ranging from startups to multi-million dollar enterprises.

The three owners of Mile High Online: Abby Miller, Parker Rayl, and Lori Rayl.

The Mile High Online team with their significant others.

It also has a diverse network of partner brands, including OraLabs, Busy Bird, Simply Unwined, Predator International, and Candy Dynamics. Several of its own, including Slice of the Moon and Nano Botanix, have also found loyal customer bases on Amazon.

A sampling of Mile High Online products.

Overcoming Inventory Challenges

When you go from selling 50 products to well over 300, you’re going to need some extra help managing all that inventory.

Mile High Online prefers to maintain a lean operation, so this meant finding a more efficient way to streamline inventory procedures and meet growing demand without running out of stock. The team knew that on Amazon in particular, this can be a tremendous hit to sales and product ranking.

This was the challenge Mike faced when he first joined Mile High Online last year, right in the middle of a global pandemic and mounting supply chain problems. Talk about a steep learning curve!

Luckily, Mike performs well under pressure (he’s the one with the space defense background), and he realized that spreadsheets and other manual processes weren't going to work anymore. He began looking for a software solution that would automate many of his daily inventory tasks to save time and increase productivity across the company.

“We’re a small business growing rapidly and I came in to handle the logistics first and foremost, and we were just doubling in growth really, really quick," Mike said. “Basically the formulas that RestockPro runs are the same ones I was doing on paper for all of our products. And when we had 50 products that was pretty easy. But it quickly grew to 300 products and to do that, the calculations every week were really time-consuming and not efficient anymore. So I went ahead and started looking for software programs.”

Automating Inventory Tasks with RestockPro

Mike tested a few inventory tools that he found online but said that nothing really met his needs until he tried RestockPro.

I stumbled across RestockPro and did the demo and just found that it worked so well and it opened up so much free time for me in the week to help with other things for the team. And it was basically calculating and forecasting the same way I was on paper and instantaneously. So it was huge. We went ahead and stuck with it.

The results were immediately noticeable, and Mike could soon rely on RestockPro to save his team around 20 hours a week, equivalent to the workload of a part-time employee.

“I used to create Excel spreadsheets with formulas just to do this right. And now I've got it just right here [in RestockPro], and it's too easy," he said.

Point, Click, and Restock from One Place

Mile High Online mainly uses the Fulfillment by Amazon program to meet orders, but it also carries local inventory and will merchant fulfill as needed. Plus, it also sells on other sites.

As the operations and logistics manager, Mike clearly has a lot on his to-do list each day. So when he sends shipments to Amazon, he needs it to be a quick and easy process. Manually managing his FBA data was taking too much time, and it was often complicated by the fact that many of his brands have multiple manufacturers.

So he especially likes that RestockPro organizes your suppliers, settings, and restocking rules into one secure, centralized hub for easy viewing and analysis.

He shared, “I’ve got all of our brands right there. So I just go brand by brand and go to the active SKUs and sort by what needs to be sent in. And I can just cover all of our brands in an hour and do what I need to do. And it makes shipments right from there that are opened up on Amazon due to the integration."

Simplified Restocking to Save Time and Increase Productivity

Before RestockPro, Mike was spending much of the week by himself doing forecasting calculations. But now that the tool can do much of the work for him, he now has more time to help out in other areas of the business. This extra manpower is much appreciated by the rest of the team.

“The team loves it because they used to not see me for the first three days of the week because I’m crunching numbers and it’s like, don’t bug Mike Monday through Wednesday because he’s busy doing this. And now it’s like, what can Mike help with around here?”

Affordable Pricing Plans

RestockPro didn’t just fit the bill for Mile High Online’s business needs, it was also a cost-effective choice for the growing company.

Let me tell you, I tried some other companies and I was kind of teetering on the edge of purchasing them. And then I saw the price and I couldn’t swallow it. RestockPro’s pricing is really great, so not only is it super efficient if you’re working with Amazon, but with the money we’re paying for RestockPro, it’s allowing me to branch out into other pieces of our company. It’s more than making up for the cost.

Next Up: Kitting

Now that Mike has found his groove with RestockPro, he’s excited to explore another customer-favorite feature: kit building.

“We're starting to have some products that require that [kit building]. And before, I really didn't have a good way to keep track of quantities of things that are in kits. So I'm really excited to explore that, and that'll help me keep tabs on those types of items.”

Grow Your Amazon Business with RestockPro

FBA sellers can take advantage of RestockPro for fast and accurate inventory forecasting and restocking suggestions. RestockPro connects to your Amazon account and guides you through each step of the inventory process, from PO creation to stickering and labeling to delivery to Amazon’s warehouses.

If you’re like Mile High Online and have inventory inefficiencies to solve, it’s time that you tried RestockPro.

Mile High Online is also a satisfied FeedbackFive user and we’re so happy to have this amazing business as a loyal eComEngine customer! If you're a current RestockPro user who would like to share your story in an upcoming case study, please contact us.