Sculpted by Aimee Gets Multichannel Glow Up With Brightpearl

Inventory is the biggest asset for many brands – but without a proper system in place to plan and manage it, it can quickly spiral out of control.

When it does, the damage can be devastating. Overstock ties up cash and often ends up liquidated, while stockouts of bestsellers hurt revenue and damage brand reputation.

It’s a struggle that Sculpted by Aimee, a multichannel beauty brand founded by Ireland’s leading makeup artist Aimee Connolly, knows all too well.

Launched in 2016, the business has rapidly expanded to include a range of over 400 products – including mascara, foundation, skincare, and fake tan – sold DTC via a Shopify webstore, its own stores and stocked in major UK retailers like Boots and Selfridges.

After hitting a 50% year-on-year growth rate, Sculpted by Aimee began running into major problems linked to poor, manual inventory planning.

Reliant on inefficient spreadsheets, the business was spending significant amounts of money and time on inventory but lacked a centralised system to manage it across multiple channels.

Other challenges started to mount up too.

Patchy processes

Like most modern retailers, Sculpted by Aimee uses a range of tools and apps, but integrating these across the business was a nightmare and had started impacting customer service.

Meanwhile, finance teams had no visibility on inbound orders and stock management – causing serious cash flow uncertainty.

Brian Cawley, the brand’s Finance Director, knew an overhaul of the operating system was urgent. He explored traditional ERPs – including NetSuite, Linnworks and Microsoft Dynamics – but ultimately ruled them out in favour of Brightpearl.

He adds: “NetSuite was the preferred option initially, but the cost kept spiraling. Every time I got on a call with them it went up. I just thought, I’m not doing this,” said Brian.

“Brightpearl was more affordable and met our primary need for a tool to manage stock and orders, plus it could connect directly with QuickBooks for accounting.”

“As the engine for your business, Brightpearl is brilliant. There’s just so much capability.”

As a leading alternative to clunky ERPs, Brightpearl offers built-for-retail features like market-leading inventory planning, a game-changing Automation Engine and Plug & Play integrations – including native connectivity to Sculpted by Aimee’s Shopify store.

With expert-led onboarding and full support, Sculpted by Aimee went live on Brightpearl in under three months.

Brian says: “The Brightpearl team did the implementation brilliantly. They showed us what we needed, walked us through it, and just got it done.

“Now we can see the entire business in one place. That is massively beneficial.”

Sculpting success

With rapid growth continuing, Brightpearl has quickly become the beating heart of Sculpted by Aimee’s operations.

All stock data now lives in one place, with clear visibility across channels – marking a major win for finance and ops teams.

There’s now a clear audit trail and POs and inbound stock are tracked. With unlimited seats included with Brightpearl as standard, every team across the business has complete visibility over processes.

With access to Brightpearl’s powerful Automation Engine, Sculpted by Aimee has been able to automate a range of manual workflows to save huge amounts of time and streamline workflows.

Brian says: “The automation power has been really, really helpful for us.

“Being able to automatically reroute orders when we are short on stock in a certain location is a massive game-changer.

“We also use automation rules to automatically add free gifts to qualifying orders. We have an app that’s separate from our website and we try to offer the customer the same offers on our app as the website. Brightpearl automation makes that easy.

“All orders are automatically synced from Shopify into our accounting systems. The possibilities are endless – it’s really cool.”

 “Brightpearl has definitely been a big player in facilitating our growth.” – Brian Cawley, Finance Director, Sculpted by Aimee

 

Beautifully blended

With a library of native Plug & Play integrations available, Sculpted by Aimee has been able to connect seamlessly with tools like Shopify and QuickBooks, with bespoke integrations supported by Brightpearl’s partner network.

Ultimately, Brightpearl has played a crucial role in enabling Sculpted by Aimee to scale fast while staying in control.

It’s helped eliminate bottlenecks and build a more seamless, scalable infrastructure.

Brian says: “Brightpearl has definitely been a big player in facilitating our growth. Without it, we’d definitely have run into more challenges and been held back a lot.

“It’s been such a busy time for the business but with more bandwidth to dig into Brightpearl’s capabilities, we will make our operations even slicker.”

Find out how Brightpearl can help your business grow fearlessly with a free demo.