Doudlah Farms Inventory Tracking System

Overview

As Doudlah Farms scaled to ~$145k/month in Amazon revenue, the absence of a shared, real-time inventory tracking system became a critical operational gap. Bag inventory was tracked in an outdated spreadsheet, product inventory across multiple locations was not consolidated, and the team had no visibility into the pipeline from raw grain through milling, cleaning, bagging, and FBA shipment. Mark Hope was tasked with building a shared system to close this gap.

The Problem

At the January 2026 operations call, the team identified three compounding inventory visibility failures:

1. No shared bag inventory — The most recent bag inventory file in Google Drive was last updated in August 2022. Jason tracked bags locally but hadn't shared the current count with the broader team.
2. No consolidated product inventory — Stock was distributed across Edgerton storage, the farm, and Jason's location, with no single view of what was available, in what state.
3. No pipeline tracking — Raw grain that hadn't been cleaned or milled wasn't visible alongside finished, bagged product, making it impossible to forecast production lead times accurately.

The consequence: the team nearly stocked out of yellow popcorn (down to 2,200 lbs / ~1 pallet) without realizing it until the call, and had no early warning system for other top sellers approaching critical levels.

System Design Requirements

Mark Hope outlined the core structure during the call. The system needs to track three product states across multiple locations:

Product States

Locations to Track

• Edgerton storage facility — Primary bulk storage; where most palletized product lives
• The farm — Raw grain storage; source for milling runs
• Miller (third-party) — Buckwheat and cornmeal sent out for milling; rye flour sourced from here
• Jason's location — Small quantities of finished product; partial bags of various SKUs
• FBA / in-transit — Inventory already shipped to Amazon or in a scheduled shipment

Key Metrics per SKU

• Units on hand (by state and location)
• Bags on hand (from EPAC; 4-week lead time)
• Current monthly velocity (units sold)
• Weeks of supply remaining
• Pending inbound (milling runs, EPAC bag orders, FBA shipments)

Current Inventory Snapshot (as of 2026-01-23)

Bag Inventory (EPAC)

EPAC requires a 4-week lead time on bag orders. The team identified the following as top-priority bag orders as of the call:

• 5 lb yellow cornmeal bags
• 3 lb white popcorn bags
• 3 lb yellow popcorn bags
• 5 lb black bean bags

Action taken: Lucy Doudlah to place expedited orders immediately and provide EPAC with a rolling sales forecast to reduce future lead time friction.

Implementation Plan

1. Mark Doudlah to request current bag inventory from Jason and share with Mark Hope for import into the new system.
2. Mark Hope to build the shared tracker, seeding it with existing spreadsheet data and the bag inventory once received.
3. System to be accessible to Karly, Lucy, Jason, and Mark Doudlah — replacing the siloed, ad hoc tracking that caused the near-stockout.
4. Karly to produce a weekly prioritized inventory order list for Jason (week 1 / week 2 / week 3 / week 4 cadence) until the system provides automated visibility.

Connection to Broader Operations Scaling

The inventory tracking system is one piece of a larger operational overhaul triggered by rapid sales growth. Related initiatives discussed in the same call:

• Edgerton warehouse space — Mark Doudlah to negotiate ~2,000 sq ft for a dedicated bagging and staging operation, which will add a new physical location to track. See ^[1].
• Weekly FBA shipments — Moving from ad hoc large shipments to a weekly cadence of 22–24 pallets, requiring tighter inventory coordination.
• Dedicated administrator — Proposed hire to handle order entry and inventory management, reducing reliance on Lucy and Karly for operational data entry.

Related

• ^[1]
• ^[2]