Built by a brand owner
who got tired of overpaying
for inventory tools.
Carpe Inventory IQ was born out of frustration — and built to solve the problems we deal with every day running our own multi-channel DTC beauty brand.
I’m Jeremy. My wife and I have been running an international beauty brand since 2007 — Shopify, Amazon, Walmart, the whole stack.
If you sell on multiple channels, you know the moment inventory goes from manageable to chaotic. We hit that wall years ago.
I tried the tools that were supposed to fix it. Finale Inventory at $499/month. The promise was always the same: connect your channels, sync your inventory, stop worrying. The reality? Screens cluttered with 35 columns I didn’t need. Reports so complex I’d copy them into spreadsheets just to get a clean view. Overpaying for features I never used, missing the ones I needed.
The breaking point was another price hike from Finale’s new corporate owners. So I built the inventory system I actually needed.
Carpe Inventory IQ is that system. Our brand is the first merchant on it, and we run our business on it every day. Every feature exists because we needed it first.
This isn’t a venture-backed startup guessing at what merchants want. It’s a merchant sharing the system he built for himself.
Why we built this
We built Carpe Inventory IQ because every inventory management software we tried was either too expensive, too complex, or too fragile for a brand selling on multiple channels.
The Overselling Problem
Amazon account health warnings are terrifying. One oversell during a sync delay and you’re defending your seller account. We built Inventory Reserve because we needed a safety net that actually worked.
The Competitor Scraping Problem
We noticed competitors tracking our inventory changes to calculate our sales velocity and target our best-selling products. We built Dynamic Cloak™ because our competitive intelligence is ours.
The Switching Problem
Every time we evaluated a new inventory tool, we couldn’t figure out how to switch without risking our business. We built Read-Only mode because the migration shouldn’t be scarier than the problem you’re solving.
What we believe
Inventory optimization should be accessible to every brand, not just the ones with six-figure software budgets.
Math, not magic.
Inventory is a counting problem. We do what any merchant would do with a spreadsheet and sales data — automatically, in real time, across every channel.
No tax on your success.
We don’t charge more because your business is growing. No per-SKU fees, no per-user fees, no per-order fees. Your rate is your rate.
Build for yourself first.
Our brand runs on Carpe Inventory IQ. Every feature gets tested on our own inventory, our own orders, our own money before it ships to anyone else.
Switching should be safe.
Every connection starts in Read-Only. You verify everything before going live. If something goes wrong, one click stops all outbound syncing. No drama.
A quick aside
Why is it called Carpe Inventory IQ?
Most people know carpe from carpe diem — “seize the day.” But the Latin is more nuanced than that. Carpe literally means to pluck, gather, or harvest — like picking fruit at the exact moment it’s ripe. That felt right for an inventory tool. We gather. We pick. We count what’s ready.
But the real story is dumber than that.
When I was younger, I worked in the entertainment industry and was lucky enough to tour the world with the projects I worked on. We were paid a per diem — a daily allowance for meals and expenses on the road. Sometimes it added up to real money.
One day I was working on location near a marina. I noticed a beautiful dark blue sailboat with the name Carpe Diem on the hull. Not the most creative boat name of all time, but my eyes played tricks on me — I read it as Carpe Per Diem. Seize the per diem. I laughed, and that became the name of my business.
Years later, when it was time to name the inventory software, I went back to the original Latin. Carpe — to gather, to pluck, to harvest. For a tool built around counting and moving inventory, it fit perfectly.
It’s pronounced car-PAY, by the way. Not carp.
Want to try the tool we built for ourselves?
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