Dropit's Tierney Anyanwu on taking the guess work out of inventory management

Inaccurate, slow, or missing decisions across demand forecasting, inventory allocation, and markdown planning can completely devastate a retailer's current season and, more seriously, negatively impact the subsequent year.

In today's trading environment, which is unpredictable at best, the need for retailers to be able to make fast and assured decisions is critical. Dropit is an AI-driven platform that takes the guesswork out of inventory management, providing a real-time view of retailers' entire inventory ecosystem allowing them to plan and execute decisions with confidence.

We speak to sales director of Dropit, Tierney Anyanwu, to find out more about the platform, the problem it solves and the benefits it brings.

decides the best and most profitable way to plan, fulfill and return every single order

Can you please describe in a nutshell what the Dropit platform does?

Dropit is an AI-driven inventory intelligence platform. While most brands have systems to track ‘where’ their inventory sits, Dropit dynamically decides the best and most profitable way to plan, fulfill and return every single order.

We sit between physical and digital demand and route orders and returns to the most profitable location.

The result is protected gross margins, selling every item at the highest possible margin.

In simple terms, less waste – more profit.

The Founder of Dropit, Karin Cabili, has experience in manufacturing, what was the lightbulb moment that led to the creation of the platform?

On a personal level, the biggest draw for me was Karin Cabili. Her lightbulb moment wasn’t about spotting one single flaw - it was the realisation that the entire retail system was fundamentally broken.

Karin grew up in textile manufacturing, she had a front-row seat to how e-commerce disrupted the industry. She saw that production, logistics, retail, and digital teams were suddenly operating in total isolation from one another. Those silos were causing overproduction, idle inventory and massive losses in margin.

That was the real spark for Dropit. She knew the industry didn't just need another plaster whacked on an isolated problem. It needed a platform built from the ground up to connect that entire ecosystem end-to-end, allowing those teams to communicate and turn data into actual operational intelligence.

Dropit drives full-price sell-through to increase margin and reduce markdowns

Dropit is targeting global markets, which type of business could most benefit from using the platform?

I’d say mid-to-large scale retailers in fashion, beauty and lifestyle. These businesses typically struggle with "trapped" inventory, stock that is sitting in a warehouse, another store or concession, while a customer is looking for it in their local store, or vice versa. Any retailer moving toward Unified Commerce (where the line between online and offline disappears) is the prime candidate.

What would you say are the top three challenges merchandising teams are facing right now and how does Dropit help to address them?

Number 1, siloed systems: I hear this every single day. Teams often can't see "one version of the truth." Dropit creates a Unified Data Lake, pulling from POS, ERP, and OMS to show exactly where every SKU is in real-time.

Markdowns (where your margin goes to die): When items don't sell in one region, they get discounted. Dropit uses AI-driven allocation to move stock to where demand is highest before a dreaded 70% off sticker rears its head.

Inefficient Fulfilment: Split shipments and high last-mile costs kill profits. Dropit’s Smart Sourcing algorithms choose the most cost-effective location to fulfil an order.

Dropit offers a unified view of a retailer's inventory ecosystem

When a retailer adopts Dropit what is the most immediate benefit?

The first thing is visibility – a retailer goes from "guessing" where their stock is to having a live, synchronised view of their entire ecosystem. This immediately reduces out-of-stocks and overselling, which directly saves sales that would have otherwise been lost.

How does Dropit sit within a typical merchandising workflow, and what is the integration process like?

Workflow: Dropit acts as an Intelligent overlay. It doesn't replace the Merchandising team’s expertise; it augments it. It sits between the planning phase and the execution phase, providing the "Micro-decisions" (daily tweaks to allocation) that humans are too busy to do manually.

Integration: We are system-agnostic. You don’t have to "rip and replace" your current OMS or ERP. It connects via API and begins "cleansing" your data into a usable format. Essentially making your current tech stack smarter and brilliant.

How long does it take for businesses to really start to see the benefits of the platform?

The impact is immediate post-launch. Within the first few weeks retailers start seeing measurable shifts in sell-through rates and inventory turnover. The financial results specifically regarding full-price sell-through and reduced courier costs - becomes glaringly obvious within the first quarter of operations.

Dropit can simulate the results of any actions that may be taken

You have access to so much data and can see where brands and retailers are getting things right (or not as the case may be), is there a common factor or factors among those that are successful that you can share?

Agility. The brands winning right now took a sledgehammer to the silos separating their website from their shop floor. They don’t care where an item lives; they only care about getting it to the customer profitably. Brands that struggle are usually the ones bogged down by legacy operational silos, where the e-commerce team and the retail team operate like competing businesses rather than a unified brand.

One of the key benefits of Dropit is the ability to be able to simulate the results of any action that may be taken, in other words removing the reliance on gut feel. Are people often surprised when they see the potential impact of a decision or is it more a case of validating and speeding up the decision-making process?

It’s a mix of Validation and Revelation.

Validation: It confirms what experienced merchandisers "suspected" but couldn't prove.

The Surprise: The "aha!" moment usually comes when the simulation shows that a small, counter-intuitive move (like moving 5% of stock from a flagship to a regional boutique) can yield a 15% jump in full-price sales. It turns "I think" into "I know."

Looking at the UK and EMEA over the next 12 months, what are your thoughts on the big trends that will inform how the market performs and operates?

We are entering an era of mandatory operational efficiency. Rising supply chain costs, potential tariff threats and inflation mean that relying on top-line revenue growth alone is no longer viable; brands have to fiercely protect their bottom line.

Furthermore, sweeping ESG regulations (like the CSRD in Europe) are turning sustainability from a marketing buzzword into a strict compliance mandate. Brands will no longer be able to just talk about being green; they will have to mathematically prove they are reducing their Scope 3 supply chain emissions

Dropit can recommend where best to send inventory to maximise sales

How does smarter inventory routing and orchestration actually help brands reduce their carbon footprint?

It comes down to simple geography and preventing waste. If a customer in Manchester orders a jacket online, traditional retail often ships that item from a centralised European or UK warehouse hundreds of miles away. Dropit’s AI looks at the network and says, "There is actually one of those jackets sitting in the Manchester boutique three miles from the customer." By routing the order locally, we drastically slash the transport distance and the associated Scope 3 emissions. Furthermore, by maximising the sell-through of existing inventory, we reduce the need for brands to overproduce new garments, tackling the apparel industry's biggest environmental sin at the source.

And Returns… a carbon nightmare, often traveling back to a central hub only to be shipped out again.

Dropit can orchestrate returns to the nearest store where that specific item is actually in demand. This keeps the product in a "local loop" rather than a national one, plus it gets the item back on the shelf far quicker.

We recently held with you a roundtable discussion with merchandise, operations and finance leaders in London. What was your number one take-away from that?

My biggest takeaway was how deeply interconnected these departments' pain points actually are, despite them often speaking different languages.

Finance is terrified of margin compression, Merchandising is fighting trapped inventory and markdowns, and Operations is drowning in fulfillment complexity.

They are all suffering from the exact same root problem - they are missing a central nervous system to connect their operations. When you solve the omnichannel routing problem, you simultaneously solve the core headaches for all three leaders – we do just that!

The recent Dropit X TheIndustry.fashion Fashion Leaders Roundtable

To find out more about Dropit and how it can transform your merchandising function, please contact [email protected] or visit dropit.shop.

Access your free white paper report on Smarter Inventory Decisions: Zero Disruptions here, and a further report on how to Maximise Revenue with End-to-End Decision Intelligence here.