Why Omnichannel Inventory Control Falls Apart Faster Than You Think

The Modern Inventory Mirage

Most people think inventory is a simple concept. Boxes go onto shelves, numbers go into systems, life marches forward. But that is only true if you sell one product on one channel to one kind of customer. The moment you add a second channel, everything gets weird. Add a third and the weirdness starts building its own personality. By the fourth channel, your inventory begins behaving like a mischievous spirit, popping in and out of systems at random, disagreeing with itself, and causing the sort of internal panic usually reserved for tax audits and unmuted Zoom calls.

The data backs this up with all the enthusiasm of a bad surprise. A 2025 retail operations report found that more than half of brands expanding across Amazon, Shopify, Walmart Marketplace, and B2B retail experience severe inventory distortion within the first six months. That means mismatched counts, phantom stock, orders that exist only in theory, and a shocking number of spreadsheets bravely attempting to hold a business together with nothing but hope and manual entry.

Customers do not care about any of this. They expect perfect availability everywhere. If your Amazon listing says 0 when your Shopify store says 17, you look incompetent. If Walmart thinks you owe them 40 units but your warehouse swears the pallets never arrived, you look disorganized. And if your D2C store sells products that no longer physically exist because your inventory sync fell asleep, you look like a brand running its business on crossed fingers.

How Omnichannel Makes Everything Worse

It is not that omnichannel creates new problems. It simply takes old problems, shines a spotlight on them, hands them a microphone, and lets them perform a three hour one man show. Every channel you add multiplies the number of places inventory can go wrong. Your systems are juggling inbound shipments, ecommerce orders, retail POs, return processing, marketplace reserves, and safety stock buffers all at the same time. One delay, one mis-scan, one mislabeled pallet, and the entire math equation collapses into nonsense.

Most 3PLs cannot fix this because they were built for simpler times. Their WMS platforms were designed for either D2C or B2B, but not both, and definitely not in real time. They sync inventory in batches. They use outdated scanners. They lean on paper trails that get smudged, misplaced, or interpreted in ways that would confuse even the hardiest archaeologist. When these 3PLs try to support omnichannel brands, they fall back on a familiar strategy: tell the client everything is fine and pray the numbers eventually line up.

That would be charming if it were not so expensive. Incorrect inventory is one of the top five causes of retailer chargebacks in 2024, and marketplace penalties for overselling have grown sharper as platforms crack down on unreliable sellers. Meanwhile, operational teams are stuck reconciling repeated discrepancies, and finance teams wonder why margins are dissolving like cotton candy in the rain.

Where G10 Gets Inventory Right

G10 approaches inventory control with the attitude of a team that has seen truly bizarre things happen to stock levels and survived to tell the tale. Since 2009, the company has been operating in the chaotic overlap of B2B, D2C, retail, ecommerce, wholesale, and fully regulated HAZMAT. That is not a recipe for gentle operations. It is a recipe for systems that must be accurate, fast, flexible, and utterly unfazed by channel complexity.

The core advantage is ChannelPoint, G10's proprietary WMS. It does not treat ecommerce inventory and retail inventory like two separate universes. Everything lives in one shared truth, updated in real time, scan based, and fully traceable. No mystery pallets. No ghost SKUs. No waiting for a nightly sync to discover that Amazon has sold through something you thought was abundant. Because ChannelPoint tracks every movement as it happens, you do not get the slow drift into chaos that plagues most brands.

Bryan Wright, G10's CTO and COO, explains why this matters so much on the floor: "A good WMS tracks inventory through the warehouse at every point you touch it. At any moment I know where the product sits, how it moved, and what it is connected to. That level of visibility is not optional in omnichannel. It is the entire job."

Why Real Time Matters More Than Ever

In 2025, channel expansion is accelerating, not slowing down. Shopify brands routinely add Amazon as their second major sales channel. Amazon sellers expand to Walmart. Retail partnerships are becoming more accessible. And mixed fulfillment models are becoming the norm rather than the exception. That means inventory must move faster, update instantly, and remain correct even when order volume doubles overnight because a celebrity mentioned your product without warning.

This is where G10's integrated approach gives customers a genuinely unfair advantage. Inventory is not just moved. It is scanned, validated, tracked, and confirmed at every hop. That means when you get 100 orders between breakfast and lunch, the system does not panic. It allocates inventory correctly. It updates channels quickly. It does not leave your customer staring at a checkout page that says out of stock when your shelves are visibly overflowing with goods.

Joel Malmquist, VP of Customer Experience, often sees the relief brands feel once their numbers finally stabilize: "Customers come in from other 3PLs where the data never matched and the problems kept snowballing. When everything suddenly lines up for the first time, it changes how their entire business feels."

From Chaos to Clarity With One Inventory Pool

Unifying inventory across all channels is not simply a technology decision. It is an operational philosophy. G10 processes B2B and D2C through the same WMS instance, which means a Shopify unit and a Target pallet draw from the same accurate counts. This avoids the classic omnichannel nightmare where two systems argue and a human must decide which one to believe.

The reason this works is the same reason G10 can move so quickly: everything is built with traceability in mind. If a pallet shifts locations, the system knows. If a unit is damaged, the system knows. If a retailer demands relabeling or a new routing guide goes live, the system adapts instead of spiraling. This degree of clarity is not an extra. It is the foundation that makes omnichannel possible.

How G10 Handles Scale Without Collapsing Under It

Omnichannel inventory control does not get easier as brands grow. The demands simply become more dramatic. A retail partner expects thousands of units to arrive exactly on time. A marketplace algorithm adjusts your listing exposure based on inventory health. A D2C flash sale triples order volume. These pressures do not hit one at a time. They hit simultaneously. And that is where most 3PLs realize they are outmatched.

G10 thrives in that environment because it was built for it. When volume surges, the network flexes across Wisconsin, South Carolina, Texas, Arizona, and Nevada. Inventory placement becomes a strategic advantage, not an afterthought. And because the WMS does not get confused when handling large orders, retail POs, and rapid fire D2C orders at the same time, the system does not degrade under stress.

This matters most for brands that are growing quickly and unpredictably. Many G10 customers come in during turbulent growth phases. Their channels expand. Their demand spikes without warning. Their internal teams are exhausted. When inventory finally behaves, everything else becomes easier. It is the difference between running uphill with a backpack full of rocks and walking at a normal human pace.

The First Step Toward Inventory That Does Not Ruin Your Day

You do not need your inventory to be magical. You just need it to be correct. You need to know that every unit is accounted for, every channel reflects reality, every retail requirement is met, and every move is tracked in a system that does not lie to you. G10 solves this not with gimmicks, but with systems and people who understand omnichannel logistics at its most complicated.

If you want your brand to survive the messy, multi channel world you are operating in, your inventory control cannot be an afterthought. When you are ready for the clarity that comes from a single, accurate source of truth, G10 can help you turn inventory from your biggest headache into your quietest strength.