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“This is the first time in my business that I look at the numbers and I know that the numbers are real.”

Play Pits went from spreadsheets and a warehouse fire to numbers its founder actually trusts. See how Fiskal rebuilt the inventory and accounting stack on Cin7 and Xero, ahead of a 1000 store CVS launch.

CASE STUDIES

How Fiskal helped Play Pits replace spreadsheets with a trustworthy Cin7 and Xero stack, and scale into retail with confidence.

“This is the first time in my business that I look at the numbers and I know that the numbers are real.”

Company

Play Pits,
founded 2018

Location

Atlanta, Georgia, US

Industry

Consumer packaged goods, natural personal care for kids

Play Pits makes natural deodorant for kids. It started, in the founder’s own words, not as a business but as a recipe in a kitchen, after her six year old son climbed into her car after football practice smelling, as she puts it, like a grown man.

About Play Pits

"Short answer is Play Pits is an all natural deodorant for smelly kids... I went looking for something that was safe and effective and that spoke to him on the shelf and nothing did that. And so I got in the kitchen and I made him something and he loved it so much. That’s how Play Pits was created."
— Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO of Play Pits

Founded in 2018, the business grew from that home kitchen into a warehouse, survived a fire that destroyed the warehouse and everything in it, and now runs through a contract cold packing partner and a 3PL. Today it sells direct to consumer through playpits.com, wholesale through Faire and local shops, and retail through Target, Amazon, and an upcoming CVS launch.

In the early years there was no operation to speak of. Ingredients were bought from Amazon, costing was simple mental math, and tracking lived in spreadsheets that were updated monthly but never quite complete. Two events exposed how fragile that setup was: the warehouse fire, which forced a full accounting of the loss, and the move into retail, which demanded a different level of accounting altogether.

What was breaking:

No sophisticated inventory system until the fire forced the issue
Costing and forecasting done through spreadsheets and back of the napkin math
Spreadsheets updated monthly with pieces routinely forgotten
A retail launch that required far more rigorous accounting than the business had in place
An accountant who did not know Cin7, creating a learning curve and the burden of training another person

The Challenge

“A lot of spreadsheets, lot of spreadsheets that were updated monthly, but we forgot this part over here.”
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO

Play Pits had already chosen Cin7 over other options, including Fishbowl, for its functionality and its interface. But an early onboarding arrangement through a connection did not work out, and that ran for around six months. The realisation that mattered was this: the business did not just need the tool, it needed someone who understood the tool and the numbers together. Play Pits found Fiskal through the Startup CPG community.

The Turning Point

“We kissed a lot of frogs... It was helpful to have somebody that understood Cin7 and really could service like the expert on the integration of it versus us being dependent upon to know how to do it.”
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO

Trust was the other half of the decision. Burned by previous partners and deep in decision fatigue, Chantel still trusted Fiskal with two significant moves in a short window: staying on Cin7, then migrating accounting from QuickBooks Online to Xero.

“The communication and the trust was established very early on in the relationship... it’s almost like, OK, they really want us to be great. So let us trust them with this decision.”
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO

Fiskal stepped in as the financial operations partner across both the inventory system and the books, then put a weekly rhythm in place.
Specifically:

Took on Cin7 as the expert partner, rather than leaving Play Pits dependent on internal knowledge of the system
Recommended Xero when asked, while making clear the final call was the client’s, then migrated the accounting from QuickBooks Online to Xero
Handled the migration so the transition was smooth, with the client only needing to manage sign in, access, and permissions
Set up reporting the client could actually use: weekly cash flow, receivable statements, management accounts, and a dashboard
Established a weekly operating cadence, Monday reporting and notifications, a Tuesday touch point with the team, email follow ups through the week

What Fiskal Did

“You all did a great job with like just moving everything over. I probably had to do a few things with like signing in and access and permissions, but it was a very smooth process and I’m actually happy with it.”
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO

The payoff the client names first is clarity, the confidence that the numbers in front of her are real.

The Results

“This is the first time in my business that I look at the numbers and I know that the numbers are real.”
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO

What changed:

Reports she can trust without having to second guess whether they are accurate or what should be on them
A powerful inventory system on the back end paired with strong accounting support
A clear weekly view of cash flow and receivables to plan around
The realisation of how much cash was tied up in inventory, and a plan to free it
Decisions made with intention and knowledge rather than guesswork

“I go to the week with so much intention and knowledge.”
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO

Retail puts a CPG founder in a hard cash position: produce months in advance, ship, then wait six months or more to be paid. The difference between launching in Target without trustworthy numbers and launching in CVS with them showed up, in the client’s words, as a mental health difference.

Peace of Mind

“My launch in Target compared to my launch in CVS, from a mental health standpoint, I’m so much better... now I’m sleeping at night. I see the numbers. I know they’re there.
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO

Play Pits is launching in 1000 CVS stores nationwide, with a launch day of March 20, alongside a new product line of deodorizing wipes for kids. The goal, as the founder describes it, is to be wherever people want to buy their deodorant, and to take over the kids’ bathroom across America with natural products that solve real problems.

Looking Ahead

“I think part of why that trust was there at an early point was because the communication and the trust was established very early on... So kudos to you and your team for really pushing us to do that.”
- Chantel Powell, Founder and CEO