How Búl Moved Off Stocky and Fixed Its Stocktakes
A Melbourne womenswear label needed to replace Stocky, whose stocktakes could only be scoped by product type. In Channel Bay it counts by product tag and orders new collections before they go live.
“We've just moved across to Channel Bay and it's been the easiest transition for our business! The team at Channel Bay are very helpful and accommodating. The app itself is user friendly and easy to understand and navigate.”
The Búl team, Shopify App Store review, Búl
The Issue
Búl is a Melbourne womenswear label, founded in 2010 by designer Virginia Martin and known for tailored pieces and collections inspired by travel. It sells on Shopify and runs a warehouse where archive pieces and live stock sit side by side. They are separate inventories that belong to different collections.
Búl used Stocky for three jobs: stocktakes, inventory adjustments and purchase orders. When Shopify announced it was retiring Stocky, the team needed a replacement for all three. Stocktakes mattered most. They weren't just a box to tick on the way out; they were the part of Stocky the team was least happy with.
What Wasn't Working
Stocky could only filter a stocktake by product type. Búl organises its stock by collection, so scoping a count to a single season meant working around the filter rather than with it.
The shared warehouse made that worse. The team wanted to count archive stock in one session and finalise it, then come back later for live stock, without one count affecting the other. Because archive and live pieces sit in different collections, a count scoped by collection would have done the job. Stocky couldn't filter that way.
Stocky also applied adjustments live while a stocktake was still in progress, which made the discrepancy report hard to use. And the team wanted to keep correcting counts right up to the moment they submitted.
“We've just moved across to Channel Bay and it's been the easiest transition for our business! The team at Channel Bay are very helpful and accommodating. The app itself is user friendly and easy to understand and navigate.”
Why They Chose Channel Bay
On the first call, Channel Bay covered all three jobs. Inventory adjustments with a reason worked across locations. The purchase order demo covered the basics of how they buy: import lines by SKU, quantity and unit cost, receive part of an order line by line, and Shopify stock updates as items are received.
Stocktakes tipped the decision. In Channel Bay, a stocktake count list can be built from a product tag, vendor, type, collection or SKU, so each session covers only the stock the team picks. A stocktake can also be saved as a draft template and reused. After a walkthrough of tag filtering and templates, Búl moved ahead.
Channel Bay also treats a count in progress differently from Stocky. Stock isn't adjusted while a session is open. Expected quantities stay live, and on submit Channel Bay applies only the difference between what it expected and what was counted, so sales made during a count don't show up as false variances.
How They Work Now
There was little to move. Channel Bay can import historical Stocky orders and rebuild supplier links from them, but nearly every Búl order is for a new collection rather than a reorder, so there was no reorder history worth bringing over. The team added its suppliers in Channel Bay and invited its staff.
Stocktakes are scoped by product tag. That lets the team count archive and live stock as separate sessions in the same warehouse, and a saved template sets up the next count of the same range.
New collections are ordered before launch. Búl keeps products in draft in Shopify until they're ready to sell, but the stock arrives before then. Channel Bay brings in active, draft and archived Shopify products, so the team can raise a purchase order for a collection that isn't live yet, receive it in full or in part, and have Shopify update as the stock is booked in.
The Results
Búl had its team set up and was raising purchase orders in Channel Bay before Stocky closed for most stores on September 1, 2026. Stocktakes are now scoped the way Búl organises its stock, and new collections can be ordered and received while the products are still in draft.
The move also shows a shortcut other stores can use. Because Búl buys new collections rather than reordering, it had no supplier history it needed to carry across, and starting fresh in Channel Bay was the shortest route.
If you're leaving Stocky too, see how Channel Bay replaces Stocky.
