Tiki had seller inventory tools. None of them showed how long stock had been sitting.
Tiki is one of Vietnam's largest e-commerce platforms — a marketplace where thousands of sellers manage inventory, logistics, and pricing through the Seller Center. The existing toolset covered stock levels, order history, and sales performance. What it didn't cover was inventory age: how long individual SKUs had been in the warehouse, and which ones were at risk of becoming unsellable.
The business signal that surfaced this gap was operational. Finance operations were processing a growing volume of manual clearance requests, seller disputes about storage fees, and ad-hoc reports from account managers trying to help sellers avoid overstocking situations. These were all symptoms of the same missing visibility layer.
I was brought in for a one-month sprint to design the Aging Inventory Report — a feature that would give sellers this visibility directly in Seller Center, without relying on account manager intervention or manual data pulls.
4
Age buckets: 0–30, 31–60, 61–90, 90+ days
1 mo
Research, design, and handoff — full sprint
0
Training required — non-technical sellers onboarded immediately
Sellers were overstocking without knowing it — and discovering the problem too late
Seller research revealed a consistent pattern: inventory decisions were being made on instinct rather than data, because the data wasn't available in an actionable form. Sellers knew their total stock count. They didn't know that 30% of it had been in the warehouse for over 60 days and was accumulating storage fees that were eroding their margin.
The moment sellers discovered this was typically when they received a storage fee invoice, a clearance deadline notice, or a report from their account manager. By then, the optimal window for action — promotion, repricing, supplier return — had often already passed.
There was a second dimension to the problem: the users who most needed this tool were not analytically sophisticated. Tiki's seller base ranges from large brands with dedicated e-commerce teams to small businesses operated by a single person. The design had to work for both — giving deep analysis to those who wanted it, and clear, actionable summary to those who didn't.
The goal wasn't to give sellers more data. Tiki already had the data. The goal was to make one specific piece of it — how long stock had been sitting — impossible to ignore.
Diagnosis, context, action — three questions the design had to answer
I started with seller interviews to understand how they thought about inventory — not how analysts thought about it. The mental model that emerged was simple: sellers wanted to know what they should do today, not how to build an inventory management strategy. The design had to translate data into decisions.
Diagnosis: What's aging?
The primary view is a visual chart showing inventory broken down by age bucket (0–30, 31–60, 61–90, 90+ days). Charts were chosen over tables for this view specifically because pattern recognition works faster than number reading for non-technical users. A tall bar in the 90+ bucket communicates urgency before the user reads a single number.
Context: Why?
Date range filters and category breakdowns let sellers investigate what drove their current inventory profile — a seasonal slowdown, a promotion that underperformed, a supplier shipment that arrived too large. This context changes what action makes sense, so it needed to be easily accessible without requiring navigation away from the main report.
Action: What do I do?
For each age bucket, the design surfaces contextual recommendations: run a promotion (31–60 days), reprice below competitor (61–90 days), initiate supplier return or write-off process (90+ days). These aren't algorithmic — they're curated based on what Tiki's category managers know works for each aging profile. Removing the interpretation burden was critical for sellers who needed to act fast.
What shipped
Aging Chart
Visual inventory breakdown by age bucket — pattern recognition over raw tables, immediately communicating which buckets need attention
Date Range Filters
Customisable lookback period — sellers can compare seasons, analyse specific promotions, or track how their inventory profile changes over time
Recommendations Engine
Curated actionable suggestions per age bucket — promote, reprice, return to supplier, or write off — removing the interpretation burden for non-technical sellers
Seller Center Integration
Designed as a native extension of existing Seller Center navigation — zero context switching for sellers already familiar with the platform
Better decisions, earlier — before the problem compounds
The Aging Inventory Report shifted when sellers discovered and acted on inventory problems — from after they received a fee invoice or clearance notice, to before those events occurred. Earlier action means more options: promotions, repricing, and supplier returns all require lead time. The report created that lead time by making the problem visible at the right moment.
Operationally, the feature reduced the volume of manual clearance requests and account manager interventions for overstocking situations. The self-service visibility layer meant fewer escalations — and more sellers managing their own inventory proactively.
Reduced
Overstocking instances and manual support requests
Earlier
Intervention — sellers act during the actionable window, not after
Higher
Inventory turnover and seller profitability