Notebook

Not lessons.

Just things I wrote down while trying to understand how the company actually worked.

Two weeks.

About two weeks after joining, Bangalore operations had already started moving to the warehouse manager.

Processes.

Checklists.

Training.

The warehouse kept running.

That probably changed the rest of my time at Wherehouse more than I realised then.

Why are operations processing warehouse orders?

Never understood this.

Warehouse managers know what’s pending.

Know the inventory.

Know who’s absent.

Know what’s delayed.

Operations should improve operations.

Not assign warehouse work.

Bangalore moved first.

The rest followed.

People don’t keep Excel because they like Excel.

We had WMS.

We had Excel.

Nobody trusted WMS enough to delete Excel.

Eventually found the reason.

Returned orders were getting added to inventory twice.

Deleted Excel after that.

Why does inventory close after the month ends?

Inventory closing always spilled into the next month.

There was always a reason.

More orders.

Less people.

Pending audits.

Accounting closes books every month.

Operations should close inventory too.

It took months before every warehouse consistently closed inventory on time.

Every warehouse is its own business.

Company-wide P&L doesn’t tell the whole story.

Every warehouse had different rent.

Different salaries.

Different delivery density.

Different utilisation.

Different brands.

And sometimes one large brand was carrying the economics of an entire warehouse.

Started tracking every warehouse separately.

The conversations changed after that.

65% should be enough.

A warehouse shouldn’t need to be completely full to make sense.

The idea was that around 65% utilisation should cover the rent.

Storage paid for the fixed cost.

Fulfilment paid for operations.

The rest was where the warehouse started making money.

Revenue can hide a bad business.

Some of our biggest brands also lost the most money.

We kept them initially.

More orders improved delivery density.

Eventually the numbers became impossible to ignore.

Revenue went down after removing a few brands.

Pricing changes behaviour.

We charged storage based on month-end inventory.

Brands figured it out before we did.

Inventory disappeared during the last week of the month.

Then came back immediately after.

We switched to charging based on the highest stock held during the month.

Cash flow starts before invoicing.

One thing I still think we got wrong.

We paid delivery partners throughout the month.

Brands paid us later.

We never lost the money.

Still didn’t like it.

Would’ve charged delivery credits upfront if I had another chance.

Growth has a ceiling.

Wherehouse growth depended on only two things.

1. Adding more brands.
2. Existing brands growing.

The second wasn’t happening fast enough.

D2R came from this.

Software follows operations.

We almost always built software after we understood the workflow.

Not before.

WMS.

OMS.

Sales App.

MinQ.

The invoice wasn’t the problem.

We tried building billing software.

Thought automation would solve it.

It didn’t.

Payments came in parts.

Cash.

Bank transfer.

Adjustments.

Reconciliation was still the real work.

In hindsight, we made life harder for accounts.

Now they had to maintain our software and Tally.

Billing should finish before the month does.

Invoices used to go out around the third week of the following month.

Working capital stayed blocked longer than it needed to.

Restructured the workflow with the operations and accounts teams so billing started immediately after month-end.

Eventually invoices started going out in the first few days instead.

Hiring is a 50/50 call.

Still believe this.

Some people completely changed after joining.

Some surprised me in a good way.

Interviews reduce uncertainty.

They don’t remove it.

Kolkata.

We launched Kolkata without moving there.

Finding the warehouse.

Hiring.

Setting up inventory.

Training.

Getting operations running.

Almost everything happened remotely.

Cutting brands.

Some brands generated impressive revenue.

They also lost money every month.

Those were the hardest conversations.

Nobody likes saying no to revenue.

Retail.

Things we kept working on.

• Reducing credit days. Retail stores delaying payment meant our money stayed stuck with them.
• Getting more payments online instead of cash. Handling cash every day created a lot of unnecessary work.
• Reducing paperwork. Orders, inventory, sales and logistics were already on software, but physical invoice copies were still required.
• Getting stores to pay the full amount instead of in parts. Fractional payments consumed a lot of follow-up and reconciliation time.

Still need to think more about…

• Direct-to-Retail
• WMS
• OMS
• Same-day delivery
• Micro warehousing
• Founder’s Office
• Breakeven
• MinQ