How a Premium Water Brand Enhanced Their Inventory System with Zoho Creator and Zoho Inventory

A premium water brand operating across the United States and Japan sought to optimise its inventory management workflows. With raw materials shipped to Japan for assembly and finished goods returned to the U.S. for distribution, the business required a system that provides automation, traceability, and efficiency across multiple warehouses and fulfilment processes. By partnering with Smartmates, they embarked on a project to design and implement a custom Zoho Creator inventory management solution, integrated with Zoho Inventory, that would address their unique batch numbering and assembly challenges.

The company was founded in Los Angeles in 2017 with a mission to deliver the pure, balanced spring water of Mt. Fuji to the United States and beyond. The brand was born from the founder’s roots in Niigata, Japan, where he grew up appreciating water with neutrality and clarity, a quality he found lacking in many bottled water brands in the U.S. Drawing from Japanese water expertise and distribution networks. With a focus on quality, transparency, and experience, they aim to elevate drinking water standards by combining its Japanese heritage with global distribution.

The company faced significant challenges in managing its fast-growing operations due to fragmented tools and manual processes. Relying on multiple platforms for sales, inventory, invoicing, and customer management created inefficiencies and data silos, while the absence of clear reporting limited real-time visibility. Key workflows such as order handling, customer follow-up, and reporting were heavily manual, consuming valuable time and resources. As the business expanded, the existing systems struggled to keep pace with the increasing complexity, leading to operational bottlenecks. These issues underscored the need for a centralised, scalable solution capable of unifying operations, automating workflows, and delivering actionable insights.

Smartmates designed and implemented a custom-coded inventory system in Zoho Creator, tightly integrated with Zoho Inventory, to overcome these limitations. The solution delivered:

• Automated batch and assembly numbering
• Warehouse automation
• Enhanced data structures
• Real-time traceability and reporting

The implementation of Zoho’s solutions involved several key steps to ensure seamless integration and functionality:

• Automated batch and assembly numbering:
  • Auto-generated assembly and manufacture numbers
  • Standardised batch number formats
  • Automatic expiry date calculation
• Warehouse automation:
  • Default warehouse assignments during assemblies
  • Automatic transfers between raw material and finished goods warehouses
• Enhanced data structures:
  • Dropdown product legends linked to SKUs
  • Integration with composite items and batch tracking
  • Real-time updates between Zoho Creator and Zoho Inventory
• Real time traceability and reporting:
  • Batch-to-order traceability via mandatory package selection in Zoho Inventory
  • Customisable dashboards and reports for assemblies and batches

The new system provided the company with:

• Full product traceability across assembly, batch, and fulfilment stages.
• Improved efficiency by automating warehouse selection, expiry tracking, and approvals.
  Flexibility through Zoho Creator customisation, ensuring the solution adapts to evolving business needs.
• Stronger compliance and reliability with robust quality assurance and audit-ready reporting.