Bargreen Ellingson Uses Netstock AI Opportunities to Cut Excess Inventory by $2M and Lift High-Turn Fill Rates 5%

After about two years with Netstock's inventory platform, Bargreen Ellingson lowered excess inventory by $2 million, improved fill rates by 5% for high-turn items and reduced stock-out rates by 2/3 of the previous rates, according to Netstock's customer story. The distributor supplies restaurants, hospitality groups, healthcare systems and institutional kitchens, and manages 25 warehouses and three large distribution centers across North America, with thousands of SKUs, cross-region operations, custom-heavy product mixes and a broad supplier network. Sales were strong, yet planners were spending hours each week wading through backorders and reviewing manual spreadsheets, tweaking reorder points by hand. As SKU counts grew and regional operations expanded, the process stopped scaling. Netstock says this created false positives that disrupted demand signals, and planners had limited visibility into potential stock-outs, so by the time stock-outs were visible it was often too late and excess inventory had already tied up capital. The solution also had to integrate with Bargreen's existing ERP. Netstock was chosen for three reasons. It could apply custom policy overrides, letting Bargreen embed its own business logic, for example higher service levels or longer lead times for particular SKUs. Its interface was easy enough that all 25 warehouse managers could quickly become effective users; Bargreen said, "Someone with no training can log in and do something useful." And, as The Reorder Point reported, Bargreen "felt it was flexible and collaborative, not just a vendor dropping off software." After onboarding, the turning point came with Netstock's AI Opportunities. It scans inventory data in real time, flags potential stock-outs before they affect service and excess inventory building up in specific locations, and suggests actions such as expediting an order or transferring stock from one warehouse to another. Some recommendations still needed local context, but Bargreen noted that nearly half of those surfaced were immediately actionable. Managers reported feeling "more empowered and effective in their roles," according to The Reorder Point. Bargreen is now exploring additional capabilities within Netstock's platform and knows "there is a lot more value to unlock."