StockTruth

Idea

StockTruth gives DTC brands an independent, real-time source of truth for inventory and 3PL performance across every warehouse they use. It connects, read-only, to the 3PLs and warehouses a brand already has (ShipBob, ShipMonk, Flowspace, or any provider via CSV/SFTP) and reconciles one "available to sell" number per SKU across every node, with no migration required. On top of that it runs an independent SLA scorecard, pick time, ship-on-time percent, mis-ship rate, computed from raw order timestamps instead of each 3PL's own self-reported dashboard.

Market gap

DTC brands that grow past a single warehouse split inventory across two or more 3PLs for regional coverage, backup capacity, or category specialization. Every system in that stack (Shopify, each 3PL's own portal, a spreadsheet) has its own view of stock, and none of them talk to each other in real time. Brands end up running a manual reconciliation process by hand, and the article "The Multi-3PL Trap" quotes an operator directly: running two 3PLs was a full-time reconciliation job. Existing inventory software either wants to become the brand's full system of record (Cin7, Extensiv) or is built for the 3PL side of the relationship, not as a neutral, independent check on it. Nobody sells the brand an outside referee. The timing is right now because 3PL adoption among mid-market DTC brands keeps rising as they add regional nodes to cut shipping zones and time, which is exactly what multiplies the reconciliation burden.

Total Addressable Market (TAM)

Bottom-up, using named 3PL brand counts as the base, since no single published figure exists for "DTC brands using 2+ 3PLs":

• ShipBob alone serves "thousands of consumer brands" per its own 2026 press materials. Conservatively treat that as 3,000.
• ShipMonk had passed 1,000 ecommerce merchants as of its April 2024 funding announcement; treat that as 1,200 today.
• Other DTC-focused 3PLs (Flowspace, Deliverr/Flexport, Red Stag, Rakuten Super Logistics, Ware2Go, Whiplash, and dozens of regional operators) plausibly add a combined 6,000 to 8,000 more brands, conservatively estimated since none publish comparable figures.
• Assumption, stated explicitly: total pool of brands using at least one meaningful 3PL relationship across these providers is roughly 10,000 to 12,000 (some double-counting of brands using more than one provider is likely, which partly offsets undercounting of smaller regional 3PLs not included above).
• Assumption, stated explicitly: per industry commentary on when brands split inventory (Capacity LLC, gobolt.com), roughly 20 percent of 3PL-using brands run 2 or more nodes at a given time. That is the core addressable segment: 10,000 to 12,000 x 0.20 = 2,000 to 2,400 brands from named providers alone.
• Scaling for the long tail of smaller/regional 3PLs not counted above (industry commentary suggests named national players cover well under half of all 3PL relationships), a reasonable total multi-node brand population is 5,000 to 6,000.

TAM: 5,500 brands x a blended annual contract value of about $5,000 (weighted across the three pricing tiers below) is approximately $27.5M ARR.

SAM: US-only, English-language brands with API-reachable 3PL data (excludes brands on 3PLs with no API and no clean export), estimated at 60 percent of TAM: approximately $16.5M ARR.

SOM: A realistic 3-year capture for a 1 to 3 person bootstrapped team, about 2 to 3 percent of SAM, is roughly $350K to $500K ARR, meaning 70 to 100 paying accounts at the blended $5,000 ACV.

Monetization strategy

Subscription SaaS billed to the brand's ops or supply chain team, monthly or annual (2 months free on annual). They keep paying because the SLA scorecard becomes the document they bring into every 3PL renewal and quarterly business review, and losing access means losing both that leverage and the stockout alerting. The product never touches the brand's fulfillment itself, so there is no operational risk in cancelling a 3PL relationship it doesn't like, which is the whole point: it stays neutral.

Pricing strategy

• Starter: $299/mo. Up to 2 connected nodes, 3,000 orders/mo. Entry point for a brand that just added its second 3PL and first feels the reconciliation pain.
• Growth: $699/mo. Up to 5 nodes, 15,000 orders/mo, full SLA scorecard and Slack alerts. This is the anchor tier: most target brands run 2 to 4 3PLs.
• Scale: $1,499/mo. Unlimited nodes, 50,000+ orders/mo, API access, priority support.

Anchor is Growth. Even Scale at $1,499/mo ($18K/year) is a fraction of the one FTE's worth of manual reconciliation work the Capacity LLC source describes brands doing by hand today, which is the pricing rationale: price against the labor cost it replaces, not against the incumbent IMS platforms.

Lead magnet

A free, no-login SLA Scorecard: a brand uploads one month of order-level CSV data from any one 3PL and gets back a one-time benchmarked report (pick time, ship-on-time percent, mis-ship rate, receiving accuracy) gated only by an email address. It proves the "independent referee" positioning immediately, using the exact scoring logic the paid product runs continuously, before anyone has to trust StockTruth with a live API connection.

Social proof that the problem exists

• Shopify Community forum thread where a merchant reports that stock levels on Shopify and stock at their third-party warehouse are never synced properly: https://community.shopify.com/t/how-can-we-sync-inventory-between-a-warehouse-and-ecommerce-platform/80779
• A second, independent Shopify Community thread where a merchant reports Mintsoft WMS pushing incorrect on-hand and available stock levels from a 3PL into Shopify: https://community.shopify.com/t/mintsoft-wms-3pl-updating-incorrect-onhand-available-stock-levels-in-shopify/408716
• "The Multi-3PL Trap" (Capacity LLC), quoting an operator directly: running two 3PLs was a full-time reconciliation job, with hidden costs from double receiving fees, triplicated safety stock, and inventory truth nobody trusts: https://www.capacityllc.com/the-multi-3pl-trap/
• Shopify App Store reviews for ShipHero, where merchants flag inventory sync inconsistencies across multiple locations and 3PL connections: https://apps.shopify.com/shiphero/reviews

Competitors

• Cin7 (Core/Omni): full inventory management and light MRP suite with multi-warehouse support built in, but it asks the brand to make Cin7 the system of record for all orders and inventory.
• Extensiv (3PL Warehouse Manager, 4PL Network Manager): can orchestrate inventory across owned and partner warehouses, but it is built primarily for 3PLs and 4PL network operators running the whole fulfillment network through its platform, not for a single brand that wants a lightweight, independent check on 3PLs it does not control.
• ShipHero: primarily a WMS tied to its own fulfillment offering; users report inventory sync problems across locations and 3PL connections in its own app reviews.
• Spreadsheets and each 3PL's native portal: the default today for most target brands, per the Capacity LLC and gobolt.com sources above.

What competitors offer now

Cin7 and Extensiv both offer real multi-warehouse stock visibility, but only after a brand routes its orders and catalog through their platform, a migration that typically takes weeks and starts around $349 to $999+/month before add-ons. Neither is built to be adversarial or neutral toward the 3PLs it connects to: Extensiv in particular sells into 3PLs as much as it sells into brands, so it has limited incentive to build a scorecard that makes a 3PL look bad. ShipHero's sync is aimed at brands using ShipHero's own fulfillment network primarily, and its own customer reviews describe sync gaps precisely where a brand's non-ShipHero locations are involved. None of them publish an SLA scorecard computed independently from raw order timestamps rather than the 3PL's own reporting.

What can be done differently to attract customers

Stay read-only and additive: connect to the 3PLs and storefront a brand already has instead of asking them to migrate their system of record, so a brand can be live in days, not weeks. Lead with the free SLA Scorecard so a brand experiences the "independent referee" value before ever connecting a live API key. Position explicitly as neutral and adversarial to the 3PLs themselves, the opposite of Extensiv's incentive structure, and hand that scorecard to ops teams to use directly in their next 3PL renewal or QBR. Price against the labor cost of manual reconciliation (a full-time job per the Capacity LLC source), not against the incumbent IMS platforms, which makes even the top tier look inexpensive by comparison.