Independent specialty retail

Your retail operations,
run with you.

We take on the weekly work of running a specialty retail operation — from buying and replenishment to fulfillment, reporting, and the daily data chores — with an operator in your corner and a platform built around how your store actually runs.

RUNS ON TOP OF YOUR EXISTING SYSTEMS · LIVE IN WEEKS, PROVEN OVER YOUR FIRST SEASON

FW26 · Season PlanPlan vs. Actual
CategoryPlanOTBTurnWOH
Road Footwear$182.4K$41.2K3.6×9.4
Trail Footwear$64.0K$18.7K3.1×11.2
Apparel — Tops$38.5K$2.1K2.2×15.8
Accessories$21.0K$9.4K4.0×7.1
Insoles$16.2K$5.8K3.8×8.0
Markdown candidates flagged: 14 SKUsSeason turn target 3.4×
15+
Years inside specialty retail
150
Stores supported on a national POS platform
2
Client platforms live in production today
Read the Hercules story

What we do

A partner who's in it with you. A platform that does the work.

We work the business with you — regular strategy calls, order reviews, and a partner who knows your operation as well as your data. Behind that sits a platform doing the daily work — reporting, planning, data checks — so your time goes to the decisions that matter. It's fitted to your business and runs on top of the systems you already own.

UNIFIED DATA

One View of the Business

Sales, inventory, and fulfillment from your POS, e-Commerce, and warehouse — pulled in automatically every night, verified to the penny, in one set of dashboards.

BUYING

AI-Assisted Buying & OTB

Weekly fill-ins and seasonal orders computed from your actual velocity, turn targets, and open-to-buy. You approve every order — then it goes straight to your vendor. Nothing moves without you.

REPLENISHMENT

Transfers & Replenishment

Warehouse-to-store transfers driven by model stock targets — recommended by the platform, reviewed together, pushed into your inventory system.

AGENT

Your Operating Agent

A daily digest, weekly store reports, and an assistant that answers questions and pitches in on the manual tasks that take up your week.

ADVISORY

A Partner, Not a Dashboard

Strategy calls, P&L reviews, buy planning, markdown timing — an operator in your corner who reads the numbers with you and owns outcomes alongside you.

CUSTOM

Custom Modules

Vendor scorecards, budget tools, integrations, whatever your operation needs next — we understand the business and build the tech to support it.

Why specialty retail is different

We speak your language

Generic consultants learn your business on your dime. Generic software makes your store fit its template. We've spent fifteen years inside specialty retail — footwear and apparel is our deepest practice — and we build the tech around how your store actually runs.

PRE-SEASON → IN-SEASON → MARKDOWN

Seasonal Planning Cycles

We work the full rhythm of specialty retail: pre-season buys, in-season adjustments, and end-of-season exits that protect margin.

SIZE × WIDTH × COLOR

Matrix Complexity

A single style can be forty SKUs. We plan at the grain where the money actually moves — and where stockouts actually happen.

TURN · WOH · GMROI

Turn-Rate Optimization

In specialty retail, inventory velocity makes or breaks profitability. We optimize turns without gutting the selection your customers expect.

How we use AI

Every number is computed. None of it is guessed.

There's a lot of AI hype in retail right now — most of it promising the machine will run your business. That's not how we build. Every number that matters — what to order, what to transfer, what you have left to spend — comes from straightforward retail math: what's selling, how fast it turns, how long your vendors take to ship. AI isn't the right tool for every problem, and we don't pretend otherwise. It helps where it genuinely helps — and nowhere else.

EVERY NUMBER SHOWS ITS WORK

No black box

Order quantities and plans come from the same math a great buyer would run by hand — done consistently, every day, without the spreadsheet. If a number looks off, we can show you exactly where it came from.

AI IN THE ENGINE

It assesses — it doesn't guess

AI's assessment is baked into the recommendations — sizing up demand, flagging what deserves a look, keeping an eye on market trends — and it speaks plain English: a morning brief and straight answers about your business. It assesses your numbers. It never makes them up.

YOU HOLD THE PEN

Nothing moves without you

Every order and transfer waits for your sign-off before it touches your systems. The platform recommends. You decide.

Pricing

Three tiers. One full service.

Every tier is a full service, not a software subscription. What scales is how much of your operation stops being your job. Pricing scales with store count and sales channels.

Foundation
$3,000/mo
Scales with stores & channels

Your data unified, your catalog and reporting run for you — never fly blind again.

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Strategic Growth
$4,000/mo
Scales with stores & channels

Every buy becomes a decision, not a guess — with a partner reviewing it alongside you.

See What's Included
Embedded
$7,000/mo
Scales with stores & channels

A senior planning lead embedded on your team — platform included.

See What's Included

How engagements start: the first months of every engagement do the heavy lifting — we connect your systems, load your history, and verify every number to the penny. It's all part of the service; there's no separate setup fee. And if a platform tier isn't the right fit yet, advisory-only retainers are available too.

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Free 30-minute consult

Let's talk.

A free thirty-minute conversation about your business — no pitch, no pressure. You'll leave with at least one thing you can act on this week, whether or not we ever work together.

Schedule a Consult