ETI is a holding company based in Alabama responsible for five distinct businesses—from nuclear PPE to veterinary wound care and medical injection molding. One flagship brand, Orex, supplies dissolvable PPE garments to roughly 70% of nuclear plants across the United States.
Behind those brands is a sprawling physical footprint: more than 300,000 square feet of warehouse space in the Dothan area, a 106,000-square-foot injection molding facility, and an additional 150,000 square feet of rented storage. For ETI, inventory isn’t just important—it’s the largest asset on the balance sheet and the backbone of customer promises across industries and continents.
The Challenge
For years, ETI ran on Sage 300 for day-to-day operations. It functioned, but as the business grew and diversified, its limitations became impossible to ignore. The legacy platform couldn’t keep up with ETI’s expanding footprint, evolving workflows, and multi-entity structure. It wasn’t designed for real-time insight, mobile scanning, or the complexity of five separate companies.
With tens of millions of dollars in inventory on the line, the team needed live data—not end-of-month surprises—especially given reporting obligations to a larger, publicly traded parent company. Between financial audits, inventory audits, and sales tax audits, ETI needed a system that could stand up to scrutiny and produce detailed reports quickly.
Adding complexity, ETI was expanding into new channels: big-box retailers like Tractor Supply (1,800+ locations), TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods, and Chewy, plus B2B customers and eCommerce. Without an integrated tech stack, every new channel meant more spreadsheets, more risk, and more stress on finance and operations.
The Solution
ETI partnered with Sharpe Concepts to build an ecosystem centered on Fishbowl Advanced Manufacturing with Lilypad, alongside tightly integrated accounting and tax tools.
Each of ETI’s five entities runs its own Fishbowl database, giving local teams autonomy while maintaining consistency in how inventory is managed and reported. Lilypad Mobile Warehouse powers barcode-driven operations across all entities—receiving, putaway, transfers, pick, pack, and ship—with support for medical barcodes and GS1-128 label handling. Warehouse staff now spend their days scanning, not guessing.
For the Curicyn animal wound care business, Lilypad Vortex powers a full B2B ordering experience. Veterinary clinics and animal hospitals log into the portal, place orders, view inventory, and push those orders directly into Fishbowl for fulfillment.
The tech stack integrates QuickBooks Desktop for accounting, Avalara for multi-state sales tax compliance, ShipStation for shipping workflows, and a custom Shopify integration for eCommerce. A Fishbowl-to-Fishbowl database integration even allows one company to send POs that automatically become sales orders in another.
The Results
Since adopting Fishbowl and Lilypad across its companies, ETI has transformed how it manages its largest asset:
- 98–99% warehouse efficiency ratio tracked monthly, with a clear upward trend since implementation
- 100% clean inventory audit record over 7–8 years across financial, inventory, and sales tax audits
- Real-time visibility into exact inventory positions across five companies, multiple warehouses, and 450,000+ square feet of storage
- 60+ custom reports built over time with Sharpe Concepts to remove waste and optimize workflows
That visibility supports better purchasing, less overstocking, fewer stockouts, and tighter control over working capital—critical when supplying nuclear facilities, hospitals, and national retailers. For a CFO whose name is on the line with each audit sign-off, that accuracy is non-negotiable.
“I didn’t want a vendor, I wanted a partner. With Fishbowl and Sharpe Concepts, it’s not just a tool, it’s a partnership.”
