Why Second Skin Audio Says Success Sounds Like Cin7

E-commerce company Second Skin Audio knows how to quiet unwanted noise for its customers, but owner & CEO Sturgeon Christie couldn’t silence the pain of running a growing business on misfitting technology. So, he turned to Cin7 for help.

In 2019, Sturgeon bought Second Skin Audio, an e-commerce company that supplies quality soundproofing products and acoustical expertise for commercial, residential, and automotive environments. Customers with sound-related issues receive strategic and effective soundproofing advice, products, and service from Second Skin Audio’s self-proclaimed team of “noise nerds” who guarantee customer happiness.

“We figure out why there’s a sound problem and then recommend a solution that is actually going to work,” Sturgeon says. “We make sure to reduce the noise in a way that meets the customer’s budget and looks the way the customer wants it to look.”

Before purchasing Second Skin Audio, Sturgeon was in digital marketing, so when he took the reins of the small but growing company, he didn’t have much experience in managing what he calls the “operational guts.” And it didn’t help that he had inherited QuickBooks Desktop as his inventory management solution.

“As we started to scale the business, it became very apparent that QuickBooks was going to be a challenge.”

Silence Can Be Deafening

Noise experts understand the beauty of silence, but there are times when silence screams. In this case, the silence was heard with every inventory management task QuickBooks was unable, and not designed, to take on.

“Some of the biggest pain points were around how inventory was handled, how products were created and managed, how inventory was ordered, and then how QuickBooks was not able to talk to other systems that we engage with on a daily basis,” Sturgeon explains. “A lot of those things were breaking down, and we were losing track of inventory while taking too long to do everything.”

What did this look like in practice?

• Importing and recording transactions from BigCommerce and Amazon into QuickBooks manually
• Planning inventory including monthly pulls, run-rate calculations, and purchase order (PO) creation with manual processes and spreadsheets
• Managing product updates one-by-one in a slow, lag-prone interface

Relying on QuickBooks as the operational hub across e-commerce, inventory, shipping, and accounting worked fine at first. But as Second Skin Audio's volume grew, the cracks became impossible to ignore. Stock was slipping through the gaps, product data had to be created and maintained by hand, and without a proper purchase order structure, missed supplier confirmations and late replenishment were becoming a real risk.

“We just knew we had to switch.”

Thankfully, the search for an inventory management system (IMS) that could pump up the volume (the right way) was fairly simple. As part of an e-commerce community called eComFuel, Sturgeon shared his challenges, and Cin7 Core was given a ringing endorsement.

From QuickBooks to Cin7: Breaking the Silence

According to Sturgeon, implementing Cin7 Core took approximately one month with the help of a Cin7 Partner who managed the whole process, including discovery interviews, configuration, and go-live support. Sturgeon also says that Second Skin Audio was significantly smaller at the time of implementation, and as the company has grown, Cin7’s benefits have replaced QuickBooks’ silence, bringing music to his ears.

“I remember the first time I had to update product information once I got into Cin7. It was a complete relief that I was no longer in QuickBooks and that this new system allowed me to bulk update in a much easier way, which is reducing my administration overhead by an estimated 90%!”

Bulk data management is helping them keep up with their product and catalog changes as their SKU count grows into the hundreds, but that’s just the tip of the benefits iceberg for Second Skin Audio.

In addition to only needing one full-time Cin7 Core administrator, saving them labor and time, Cin7’s APIs have opened the door to powerful customizations. Sturgeon, with aid from his developer, is molding Cin7 to meet their specific requirements. One example? Building an AI-powered tool that reads, processes, and categorizes their invoices, imports the invoice directly into Cin7 Core, and once it’s reconciled, authorizes it before sending it to Xero.

They’re also looking to develop what Sturgeon calls a “rules-based order processing brain” that will help reduce manual review, like fraud checks, warehouse selection, and temperature-sensitive rules, by 60-70%.

“Cin7’s ability to plug in with different APIs and connect to different tools is a big part of how we’ve grown in the last seven years,” Sturgeon says.

He also says Cin7 Core’s benefits don’t stop there. His team now:

• Enjoys reduced stock conflicts with better inventory accuracy. Cin7 Core became Second Skin Audio’s single source of truth, providing stronger inventory control. Cin7 also provides new and improved inventory and purchasing workflows, which highlight late orders, unconfirmed POs, and more so issues are no longer “slipping through the cracks.”
• Delivers faster with more reliable fulfillment. Unshipped orders? Cin7’s automated reminders and reporting help Sturgeon and his team know what’s happening at all times, ensuring orders don’t quietly stall.
• Employs operational guardrails for purchasing and supplier follow-up. Cin7 gives their team the ability to track POs and receive automated notification when suppliers don’t confirm ship dates. This helps Second Skin Audio eliminate stockouts and the fear of overselling.
• Controls their multi-warehouse inventory with ease. With Cin7 Core, Second Skin Audio supports three warehouses (their own warehouse in Charlotte, North Carolina and two 3PLs). It’s never been easier to move inventory between locations, manage inventory transfers, and split orders.
• Automates their assemblies and kitting needs. Cin7 automates the company's entire kitting and assembly process, from bundling SKUs and managing component-based inventory to cutting raw sheets into sellable units. Manual coordination is gone, and inventory errors are significantly reduced.

By integrating with Easy Insight, the Second Skin Audio team now has the reporting clarity they were missing. Weekly reorder alerts based on real sales trends mean they're never caught off guard, and they have full visibility across both Amazon and their e-commerce storefront. They can also see exactly where they're making money, with profitability broken down by product and order across revenue, COGS, shipping, and marketing.

“With Cin7 Core, I can see the turn rate on a product, and if it’s making us negative X dollars in the last period of time, I have a lot of confidence that we can just get rid of it,” Sturgeon says.

Cin7 Core: Futureproofing For a Soundproofing Business

As the business continues to thrive, Sturgeon says Second Skin Audio is transitioning from BigCommerce to Shopify and eliminating the need for Cin7’s B2B Portal, which they loved. He also says the harmonious partnership between his company and Cin7 delivers advantages QuickBooks couldn’t, including the business’s ability to connect directly with Xero for automated reconciliations so their external accountant can service their business faster.

“I'm confident that we could not be doing what we're doing right now if we had not switched from QuickBooks,” Sturgeon says. “The hope when we switched was that it would be able to scale with us if we were able to scale and grow the business. And so far, that has been true.”

With Cin7 Core, Second Skin Audio has significantly grown their product volume while also continuing to deliver on their primary value proposition: providing great service and fast fulfillment times.

“We adopted Cin7 when we were bringing in roughly $1 million in revenue and have scaled to between $5 and $6 million. Cin7 Core’s modern connected stack has supported us every step of the way.”