Sagely Naturals makes plant-based, CBD (Cannabidiol) infused products that support whole self-wellness. Co-founded by Kerrigan Berhens and Kaley Nichol, Sagely Naturals has grown to become the largest female-founded CBD company in the US.
“The first time I tried CBD in 2015, it literally changed my life,” Kerrigan Behrens tells Forbes. “I have been dealing with chronic back pain for years, and a friend recommended that I try it to help to alleviate the pain. Someone gave me some CBD honey to try and about an hour after I used it, my back felt better than I could remember in years. In that moment, I really felt like CBD had the potential to change a lot of peoples’ lives for the better.”
Sagely Naturals’ core customers are women who are seeking better quality of life through support with sleep, anxiety, and pain management. They want to use natural products and are interested in the medicinal properties of cannabis, but don’t want to experience any psychoactive effects.
But with rapid growth in any brand-new category—especially one that is regulated differently in many US states—comes the pain of inventory and logistics management. To complicate things further, Sagely Naturals has a number of channels to market, including both small and big box retailers, and their own direct-to-consumer (D2C) ecommerce store.
To cure the growing pains of their pain-management product, Sagely Naturals found a natural solution in Cin7. It’s able to handle all the ins-and-outs of their multiple sales channels, including EDI integrations to big box retailers, and the reporting functionality means they always know exactly where they are in terms of inventory and sales.
“The reporting flexibility in Cin7 has been really good,” says Emma Roy, Logistics & Wholesale Operations Associate at Sagely Naturals. “I can tell you, right now, this month, where we are—pipe vs fill, the day after our CEO asked me, ‘can you please figure that out?’ It has great reporting, and it’s super flexible. That kind of flexibility has been the thing that’s been really valuable.”
Sagely Naturals uses a third-party logistics (3PL) warehouse. Without the direct inventory control that comes with a self-managed warehouse, it was vital that their 3PL provider integrated seamlessly with their inventory management software and their Shopify store. Happily, Cin7 fits the bill perfectly.
“All the orders that come through Shopify sync right away with Cin7, and stock levels also sync with Cin7. The ecommerce orders just go straight to the 3PL, and I practically don’t even have to pay attention to them — they get picked, packed, dispatched, closed out. I just look every day to make sure they’re still moving through the system and nothing’s getting jammed up. With Cin7, it’s very plug and play.”
Thanks to its 3PL integration, Sagely Naturals can use Cin7 for “pretty much all” of their inventory and supply chain management. And Cin7’s integration with QuickBooks syncs their sales, purchases, costs and more for easy accounts reconciliation.
“When you’re a startup and having to be so flexible yourself, to have your software be so flexible, it’s a real benefit. It’s a big benefit,” Emma says.
Emma says that Cin7 provides the same value as big players like NetSuite, but at a lower cost. “You do the price comparison between Cin7 and NetSuite and you laugh out loud,” Emma says. Sagely Naturals have found that Cin7 offers more personal attention than bigger ERP providers. Having that close connection has been incredibly valuable when issues arise.
“Because Cin7 is a growing company, and it’s designed to be flexible, you can call somebody who’s a developer and talk it out with them,” Emma says. “You can be like, ‘I’m trying to achieve this. How can I get that done with this software?’ And the team will be like, ‘Let’s figure that out.’ With other enterprise software, that never happens. That kind of flexibility is just not on the table at all.”
Even as Sagely Naturals continues its rapid growth, maturing into the leading CBD brand in retail stores in the US, Cin7 does everything they need for supply chain and inventory management. Emma says it looks like it’ll stay that way for a long time.
“Cin7 does all the core functions that you need a supply chain management system to do, for a startup price. And with premium support, I can call anyone at any time and talk to an actual person. For all of that, it’s just incredible value.”
