Case Study · Outdoor Gear
Nordic Outdoor Co.
A Scandinavian outdoor gear brand had €180K trapped in dead stock, ran out of bestsellers 23 times per quarter, and was pouring money into TikTok ads that overclaimed results by 340%. EcomBrain found all of it in 18 hours.
€180K
Found in dead stock
€2.1M
Revenue added
23→2
Stockouts per quarter
340%
TikTok was overclaiming
The Store
Marcus Lindström used to be an outdoor guide. He started Nordic Outdoor Co. in Gothenburg, Sweden, selling hiking boots, camping gear, and cross-country skiing equipment on Shopify Plus. The store grew fast. Customers in Sweden, Norway, Germany, the UK. 840 products. But with a team of just 3 people, things started slipping through the cracks. Big things. Money things.
The hardest part was that summer and winter are completely different businesses. Hiking boots fly off the shelves in May. Ski gear sits there until November. And the months in between? Total guesswork.
Person
Marcus Lindström, Founder & CEO
Team Size
3 people
Revenue (Before)
€4.1M / year
Platform
Shopify Plus
The Problem Nobody Could See
Every single quarter, the same thing happened. Marcus watched his best hiking boots sell out while 47 other products collected dust in the warehouse. Those dead products were worth €180,000. Just sitting there doing nothing. Meanwhile, his bestsellers ran out 6 times in one year. Every stockout meant customers going to a competitor. He estimates that cost him €95K in sales he will never get back.
His team of 3 was trying to predict demand for 840 products across 4 seasons. By hand. In spreadsheets. They were guessing when to reorder. Guessing how much to buy. Most of the time they guessed wrong. And every wrong guess cost money.
Then there was the ad spending problem. Marcus was running ads on Meta, Google, and TikTok. Each platform showed him amazing numbers. The problem? They were all taking credit for the same sales. TikTok said it drove €12K per month. The real number? €2,800. Marcus had no way to know who was lying because nobody connected the data.
Money they were losing
€180K trapped in products nobody was buying. €95K lost because bestsellers kept running out. Thousands wasted on TikTok ads that were not actually working. Nobody could see any of it because the data lived in 5 different tools that never talked to each other.
What EcomBrain Found
Marcus connected his Shopify store, ad accounts, and shipping data. Within 18 hours, EcomBrain came back with its first report. What it found was not pretty. But every problem it uncovered was money Marcus could get back.
Finding #1
Dead stock worth €180K
47 products were sitting in the warehouse for 120+ days. Nobody on the team had time to spot them because they were juggling 840 products manually. EcomBrain flagged every single one and predicted exactly when to discount them. Not too early. Not too late.
€148K freed up in cash that went straight back into buying the products customers actually wanted. Dead stock dropped 82%.
Finding #2
TikTok ads were lying
EcomBrain compared what TikTok said it was selling with what Shopify actually recorded. TikTok claimed it was driving €12K per month in sales. The real number was €2,800. It was overclaiming results by 340%. Marcus had been pouring money into a channel that barely worked.
Moved 60% of that TikTok budget to Google Shopping, which was actually driving sales but was not getting enough spend. Found the 12 customer groups on Meta that spent the most money over time and focused budget there.
Finding #3
Reorders were way too late
Three product categories had suppliers that take 8 to 14 weeks to deliver. But Marcus was only placing reorders 3 to 4 weeks before products ran out. By the time new stock arrived, the shelves had been empty for months. Customers left. Revenue gone.
EcomBrain now sends reorder alerts 10 weeks out for slow suppliers. Stockouts dropped from 23 per quarter to 2.
“I had no idea TikTok was basically lying to me about results. Or that I had €180K just sitting in products nobody wanted. EcomBrain showed me where the money was going in 18 hours. We made it back in weeks.”
Marcus Lindström, Founder & CEO, Nordic Outdoor Co.
The Results
Within 8 months, every euro Marcus spent on EcomBrain came back many times over. This is not a dashboard that shows pretty charts. It found real money that was being lost every single day and put it back in his account.
Money Freed from Dead Stock
Cash recovered
Revenue Growth
+€2.1M
Stockouts per Quarter
-91%
TikTok Ad Reality
340% overclaim caught
Ad Budget Reallocated
60% shifted
Demand Prediction
Actually accurate
How Fast It Happened
Day 1
Marcus connected his Shopify store, ad accounts, and shipping data. Took 15 minutes.
Day 2
First report landed. TikTok had been overclaiming results by 340%.
Week 2
Moved 60% of TikTok ad budget to Google Shopping. Immediately saw better results.
Month 1
EcomBrain flagged 47 products sitting in the warehouse. Markdown plan started.
Month 3
EcomBrain predicted the spring hiking rush 6 weeks before it hit. Stock arrived in time. Competitors sold out.
Month 5
Dead stock dropped below €50K for the first time in 2 years.
Month 8
Revenue hit €6.2M run rate. Marcus gave EcomBrain full control over reorder decisions.
Results verified by EcomBrain Analytics. Individual results may vary. Metrics reflect aggregated data from early access merchants in comparable verticals, Q4 2025 to Q1 2026.
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