AIMS360 brings 45+ years of apparel ERP discipline to cosmetics, skincare, color, fragrance, haircare and personal care brands, and the domestic manufacturers who supply them. Built for the operational reality of selling into Sephora, Ulta, Target, CVS and Nordstrom while running Shopify and Amazon DTC, with sampling, lot tracking, expiration management and 3PL integration handled out of the box.
AIMS360 is the cosmetics ERP built for the brand side of beauty. It manages the full catalog complexity of cosmetics and personal care: shade and finish variants, fill sizes, gift sets, deluxe minis, lot, batch and expiration on every SKU.
The beauty industry has been served, until now, by two flawed categories of software. On one side, process manufacturing ERPs, Aptean Process Manufacturing, Deacom, BatchMaster, Datacor, Valdata, built for the people making the goo. They are excellent at formula control, batch sheets, raw material yield, GMP compliance and 21 CFR Part 11. They are not built for the brand operator. They do not run Sephora EDI. They do not unify Shopify and Amazon and a B2B portal against one inventory pool. They do not allocate samples or GWP. They are factory software, not brand software.
On the other side, lightweight inventory tools, Cin7, Katana, Prediko, BoxHero, built for DTC-first SMB brands. They handle Shopify, basic multichannel, and inventory counts. They struggle the moment a brand lands real wholesale. Multi-retailer EDI, retailer chargeback management, lot allocation against ASNs, 3PL consolidator integration, sample inclusion rules, returns with disposal documentation, these are not in the tool. Beauty brands hit a wall around the time Sephora or Ulta says yes.
AIMS360 is the third option. A vertical ERP built for finished-goods consumer brand operators, where the brand is built, the product is sourced or co-manufactured, the channels are wholesale plus DTC, the retailers expect retail-grade EDI compliance, and the inventory has to be lot-tracked, expiration-managed and sample-segmented. AIMS360 also supports the domestic manufacturers and co-manufacturers who supply these brands, so the same platform spans the supply chain.
The four operational truths that define beauty & personal care:
1. Wholesale is the growth engine. Beauty brands that scale beyond niche DTC almost universally do so through retail. Sephora and Ulta are the two largest specialty channels in the country; Target, CVS, Walmart and Walgreens are the largest mass channels; Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's and Saks are the luxury channels. Every one of them requires EDI compliance before a brand can ship a single carton. A brand that lands Sephora and Ulta in the same year is suddenly operating two separate EDI integrations, each with its own ASN spec, its own carton labeling rules, its own chargeback structure. AIMS360 ships this capability natively.
2. SKUs explode in beauty. A skincare brand with 20 hero products quickly becomes 200 SKUs once shade variants, size variants, gift sets, holiday kits, deluxe minis, sachets, sample sizes and retailer-exclusive bundles enter the catalog. Add seasonal packaging and limited-edition collaborations, and the SKU count doubles again. PIM is not a nice-to-have for beauty, it is the system that keeps the catalog usable.
3. Samples and GWP are their own business. Beauty lives on sampling. Deluxe minis ride along with hero orders, GWP triggers at order-value thresholds, samples are pulled by 3PLs based on inclusion rules, and the cost of a sample program is a real line item, not a free byproduct. AIMS360 treats samples and GWP as their own SKUs with their own inventory bucket, cost and allocation rules.
4. Compliance is non-negotiable. Lot and batch tracking, expiration management, ingredient transparency, recall readiness, retailer-specific certificate of analysis requirements, CPSIA where applicable, MoCRA for cosmetics, INCI labeling, beauty brands operate inside a real regulatory perimeter. AIMS360 captures lot and expiration at the SKU level, defaults allocation to first-expired-first-out, and produces the documentation retailers and regulators require.
The platform handles every operational reality above. Here is what that looks like inside the system.
One managed integration to every major beauty retailer. Purchase orders flow into the OMS, ASNs and invoices generate to spec, and compliance documentation prints with the carton.
Omnichannel OMS unifies Shopify, Shopify Plus, Amazon, Faire and B2B portals against a single inventory pool, so wholesale commitments and DTC demand never collide.
Cosmetics-grade inventory control. Lot and batch on every SKU, expiration on every line, FEFO allocation by default, sample and GWP as separate inventory with their own rules.
Beauty operations have a predictable shape. AIMS360 maps that shape directly into the platform, with specific configurations for each step.
Every SKU carries shade, size, fill, batch, lot, expiration, INCI, and channel-level attributes. PIM syndicates the catalog to Shopify, Amazon, retailer portals and B2B in the format each one wants. Explore PIM →
For brands working with co-manufacturers, and for the manufacturers themselves, PLM holds the formula, the BOM, the supplier specs, the approval workflow and the change history. Explore PLM →
One managed connection per retailer. POs flow in, ASNs and invoices flow out. UCC-128 GS1 labels and lot-level documentation generate with the carton. Explore EDI →
Shopify, Shopify Plus, Amazon, Faire, B2B portals, retailer EDI, all into one OMS, one inventory pool, one set of allocation rules. Explore OMS →
Inventory by lot, by expiration, by location. Picks default to shortest-dated stock first. Cycle counts and reconciliation run by lot, not just by SKU. Explore WMS →
Order, inventory, ASN, return and adjustment sync with the major beauty 3PLs and consolidators, including Sephora and Ulta consolidator relationships. Explore 3PL →
Samples are real SKUs. GWP triggers fire on order value or product purchased. The 3PL receives the rules and picks accordingly. The cost lands in finance, not in a black box.
Beauty returns trigger lot capture, quarantine assignment, disposal documentation, and retailer chargeback workflows. RMA logic supports credit, replacement and chargeback dispute.
Card payments, ACH, retailer remittance, factor integration and full GL accounting in one system. Monthly close becomes a process, not a forensic investigation.
No bolted-on third-party billing for the basics, no separate inventory tool, no shadow EDI vendor. AIMS360 ships with the full operating stack.
Formula, BOM, supplier collaboration, approvals, change history.
Shade, size, variant, INCI, retailer-specific attributes, one source.
One system of record across operations, inventory and finance.
Lot picking, FEFO allocation, expiration-aware cycle counts.
Shopify, Amazon, EDI retailers, B2B, one inventory pool.
Buyer relationships, account history, retailer contact stack.
Sephora, Ulta, Target, CVS, Walmart, Nordstrom and 350+ more.
Shopify, Shopify Plus, Amazon, Faire, custom B2B portals.
Showroom orders, sales rep workflows, line sheets, B2B portals.
Multi-carrier rates, retailer routing guides, parcel and LTL.
Card, ACH, retailer remittance, factor integration.
Full GL, AP, AR, monthly close, built in, not bolted on.
Channel margin, sample cost, subscription LTV, chargeback exposure.
Reorder triggers, anomaly detection, content automations.
SOC 2, Microsoft partner stack, 24/7 emergency support.
Category revenue context: Prestige and clean beauty brands sell through Sephora (LVMH, $3.46 billion online in 2025), Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, Neiman Marcus, Bluemercury, Space NK and Credo. Ulta Beauty spans prestige and mass at roughly $11 billion total ($2.46 billion online), with Ulta shops inside 500+ Target stores. Bath & Body Works does $1.38 billion online. Mass and drug channels (Target, CVS, Walgreens) and marketplaces (Amazon) reach the broadest audience; e-commerce is now 48% of US beauty sales (NielsenIQ). AIMS360 supports EDI across prestige, specialty, mass and drug beauty channels.
Selling into any major U.S. beauty retailer requires EDI compliance before the first carton ships. Each retailer has its own document spec, its own carton labeling standard, its own ASN timing window, and its own chargeback structure. Brands that try to manage this with spreadsheets, manual portals, or generic EDI services almost always hit a wall, either inside the retailer relationship (chargebacks pile up) or inside their own operations (the team can't keep up with the volume).
AIMS360 includes a fully managed EDI integration with every major beauty channel. Purchase orders flow directly from the retailer into the OMS, allocation runs against a single inventory pool, ASNs generate to the retailer's exact format, UCC-128 GS1 carton labels print with lot and expiration encoded, and invoices submit on the retailer's window. Chargebacks are tracked at the document level so disputes have evidence.
Specialty beauty: Sephora, Ulta, Sally Beauty, Bluemercury, Credo. The specialty channel is where most beauty brands hit their first major retail growth curve. Sephora and Ulta both run prestige-skewed assortments and have specific shop-in-shop programs, sample requirements and consolidator relationships. AIMS360 handles the EDI plus the consolidator routing.
Mass & drug: Target, Walmart, CVS, Walgreens, Rite Aid. The mass channel is the volume driver, and the most operationally demanding. Walmart's EDI is famously strict; Target's Perfect Order Program penalizes ASN errors directly; CVS and Walgreens both require lot-level visibility for cosmetics. AIMS360 ships with each retailer's spec pre-configured.
Department: Nordstrom, Macy's, Bloomingdale's, Saks, Neiman Marcus. The luxury and prestige channel still matters for fragrance, color cosmetics and prestige skincare. Department store EDI is less volume-driven but more documentation-heavy.
Club & off-price: Costco, Sam's Club, TJX (TJ Maxx, Marshalls, HomeGoods), Ross. Off-price and club are common channels for excess inventory liquidation and limited-distribution beauty plays. AIMS360 supports the SKU pack-out, club bundling and chargeback flow these retailers demand.
International: Sephora Europe, Boots, Mecca, Shoppers Drug Mart, Selfridges. AIMS360 handles international retailer EDI and the PDF purchase order to EDI conversion workflow some international retailers still use.
Most beauty brands start DTC-first. Shopify, Amazon, maybe a few influencer codes. Inventory is whatever is in the 3PL bin, and the operating system is some combination of Shopify reports, QuickBooks, and the founder's spreadsheets. This works up to a point.
Then wholesale starts. The first specialty boutique. Then a regional chain. Then Sephora says yes, or Ulta, or Target. The DTC tooling that worked for one Shopify store does not work for the moment when wholesale demand starts pulling against the same inventory pool that's already promised to DTC customers. Brands routinely oversell on Shopify because a Sephora PO drained the warehouse, or run out of stock on a Sephora PO because Black Friday DTC took the inventory first. Every founder who has run a growing beauty brand has lived through this.
AIMS360 solves it with one inventory pool and explicit allocation rules. Wholesale commitments to Sephora, Ulta or Target are protected by allocation against the same physical inventory that DTC pulls from. Reorder triggers fire before stock-outs. Channel pricing is set per customer, per channel, MAP-protected for some, wholesale-tiered for others. Returns route to the right place: DTC returns to the brand 3PL, retail returns to retailer reverse logistics or back to the brand depending on retailer rules.
The financial side benefits too. Most DTC-first beauty brands have no clean view of channel margin. Shopify margin is in one place, wholesale margin is in another, Amazon FBA margin is in a third, and the cost of samples is sitting in an unallocated bucket. AIMS360 puts channel P&L on one page. Founders and CFOs see the margin of each channel net of fulfillment, samples, returns and chargebacks, in real time.
This is what "operator-grade" means. Not a fancier dashboard. The system that lets a beauty brand operate four channels simultaneously without each one stealing from the others.
Search for a beauty ERP or ERP for personal care and almost every result is a process manufacturing system built for formulators, not brands. Beauty buyers typically shortlist some combination of these. Here is the honest breakdown of where each fits, and where it doesn't.
Process manufacturing ERPs are built for the formulator, the company physically making the goo. They excel at formula control, batch records, GMP, 21 CFR Part 11, MoCRA documentation, raw material yield, and FDA inspection readiness. If the company being served is a contract manufacturer or a vertically integrated brand that owns its own production, these tools are excellent inside the factory. They are not built for the brand operator. They do not run Sephora EDI as a native capability. They do not unify Shopify, Amazon, Faire, B2B and retailer EDI against one inventory pool. They do not allocate samples or GWP. AIMS360 is the inverse: built for the brand operator, with full PLM for brands that need formula and BOM management, and the ability to integrate with the manufacturer's process ERP rather than replace it.
These are good DTC-first inventory and channel tools, well-suited to early-stage Shopify-led beauty brands. They handle multichannel inventory, basic order routing, and Shopify ecosystem integrations. They start to struggle the moment a brand has meaningful wholesale, retailer EDI complexity, sampling logistics, returns processing requirements, factor financing, or a need for full GL accounting in one system. Most brands using these tools end up bolting on a separate ERP, separate EDI service, separate WMS for the 3PL relationship, and separate accounting, at which point the cost and operational drag of maintaining four disconnected tools exceeds the cost of running one vertical ERP. AIMS360 is one platform across all of it.
These are horizontal ERPs. Powerful, customizable, and built for any industry, which means they are built for no industry in particular. Beauty workflows like retailer EDI, lot and expiration tracking, sampling, 3PL integration and omnichannel allocation require significant customization, third-party add-ons, and a long implementation. NetSuite implementations for beauty brands routinely take 9-18 months and require ongoing consulting spend. AIMS360 deploys faster, costs less to implement and maintain, and is run by an industry-operator team. NetSuite makes sense for enterprise-scale brands with custom-everything appetite and a dedicated implementation budget; AIMS360 fits the operating model of growth-stage and established brands that want vertical fit, not a build project.
The starting stack of every emerging beauty brand. It works until it doesn't. The signal that it has stopped working is usually one of three events: wholesale begins and the team is suddenly running EDI manually through SPS or TrueCommerce web portals; a retailer demands lot or expiration documentation and nothing in the stack can produce it; or revenue passes a threshold where the spreadsheet stops being trustworthy and the founder realizes they don't actually know what the channel margins are. AIMS360 is the platform brands move to at that inflection point.
AIMS360 fits the brand on the way up, and the manufacturer behind it. Most customers come on board around the inflection where QuickBooks plus Shopify plus spreadsheets stops working: wholesale begins, retailer EDI is required, or revenue passes a few million.
Beauty brand operations span founders, COOs, finance leads, operations managers, planners and EDI coordinators. Here's what changes the week AIMS360 goes live.
Channel margin, customer P&L, inventory by lot, retailer scorecard exposure, cash-conversion cycle, all of it on one screen instead of four. Most beauty founders running early Shopify-plus-spreadsheets stacks have no clean view of true channel margin. AIMS360 makes that view the default, not a project the CFO has to build from scratch every quarter.
Adding a new retailer is days, not weeks. Adding a new 3PL is a configuration, not a rebuild. Adding a new channel doesn't require duct-taping another spreadsheet to the stack. The COO of a growing beauty brand should be optimizing channel mix and unit economics, not chasing why Shopify and the 3PL disagree on inventory.
Full GL accounting is built into AIMS360, not bolted on to a separate QuickBooks file. Channel revenue, COGS, sample cost, chargebacks, factor activity, retailer remittance all post into the same general ledger. Monthly close moves from a multi-week forensic investigation to a process. Audit readiness is a side effect.
Sephora, Ulta, Target, CVS, Walmart and Nordstrom POs land directly in the OMS. ASNs and invoices generate to spec. UCC-128 labels print with lot and expiration encoded. The EDI coordinator stops chasing portal logins and starts working chargebacks proactively, most teams cut chargeback exposure by half within the first quarter.
One inventory pool across DTC, wholesale, Amazon, B2B and EDI retailers. Allocation rules enforce wholesale commitments. FEFO defaults so expiration is managed automatically. Reorder triggers fire before stock-outs across channels, not after one channel has drained the warehouse. Sample and GWP inventory is segregated so promotional stock doesn't leak into sellable counts.
Domestic manufacturers and co-manufacturers running AIMS360 push lot, batch and expiration data directly to their brand customers' systems. Brand orders flow in via integration rather than email. Forecast visibility improves on both sides. Recall readiness is a real capability rather than a binder on a shelf.
Implementation is the part of ERP that goes wrong most often. Industry data is unflattering: a meaningful share of ERP projects miss timeline, miss budget, or fail outright. AIMS360 runs at a 97.5% project success rate, faster than industry average, because the implementation team is built from beauty and fashion operators rather than generalist consultants, and because the scope is set before contract signature, not discovered after.
The phases of a beauty brand implementation look like this:
1. Pre-scope (free, before signature). The implementation team works with the brand to scope the project at AIMS360's expense, before any contract is signed. The output is a Customer Success Proposal, a written document covering data migration scope, channel and retailer configuration, integration mapping, training plan and timeline. The brand knows what they're getting before they sign.
2. Data migration. Styles, customers, vendors, inventory by lot, open orders, open POs, history. The migration team handles cleansing, mapping and load. Brands moving from QuickBooks plus Shopify plus spreadsheets get their messy data cleaned in the process, this is often the first time a brand actually has trustworthy customer and SKU master data.
3. Channel configuration. Shopify or Shopify Plus connects natively. Amazon Seller Central or Vendor Central plus FBA. Faire, B2B portals, Joor and NuOrder for wholesale. Retailer EDI for every retailer the brand sells to. Sample and GWP rules. Subscription logic if applicable.
4. WMS and 3PL setup. Inventory by location, lot picking, FEFO allocation, kitting rules, retailer-specific carton labeling. 3PL integration tested end-to-end before go-live.
5. Testing and parallel run. The system runs in parallel with the brand's existing tools for an agreed window. Orders, ASNs, returns and reconciliation are tested against the legacy stack. Go-live happens when both sides match.
6. Training. Role-based training delivered during onboarding and continuing post-implementation. The implementation team stays engaged.
7. Go-live and ongoing support. Free, unlimited support is included. 24/7 emergency support for production-impacting issues. The implementation team transitions the account to support but stays available for the first quarter.
Typical end-to-end timeline for a beauty brand: weeks to a small number of months depending on data complexity, number of retailers and channels, and the 3PL relationship. Brands replacing Cin7 typically move faster. Brands replacing a partial NetSuite deployment or a legacy ERP take longer.
Indie and growth-stage beauty brands, established multi-retailer wholesalers, and the domestic manufacturers who supply them.
Cosmetics inventory management is different from general inventory work because every unit carries a lot number, a batch, an expiration date and usually a shade or fill variant. Get one of those wrong and the cost is not a miscount; it is expired stock in a customer's hands, a failed Sephora audit, or a recall you cannot trace.
AIMS360 runs cosmetics inventory on a few simple rules. First-expiry-first-out (FEFO) picking ships the oldest sellable lot first, so product does not age out in the warehouse. Every lot is traceable from the receiving dock to the exact order it shipped on, which is what MoCRA and retailer compliance teams ask for. Samples, testers and gift-with-purchase units are tracked separately from sellable stock, so marketing does not silently drain inventory the sales team already committed. And the 80/20 reality of beauty catalogs, where a fifth of SKUs drive most of the revenue, shows up in reporting so buyers reorder heroes before they stock out. It runs on the same inventory and warehouse engine that powers every AIMS360 vertical.
The questions buyers bring to discovery calls, answered directly.
Five years ago, a beauty brand could run on Shopify plus a 3PL and a contract bookkeeper through eight figures of revenue. That window has closed. Three shifts in the operating environment now force brands into vertical ERP earlier in their lifecycle.
Wholesale has become essential, not optional. Sephora and Ulta have become the two most important customer-acquisition channels in beauty, more important, by margin and volume, than paid social for most brands. Brands that previously deferred wholesale until their DTC peaked are now pursuing wholesale from year one or two. That means EDI, retailer compliance, lot tracking and 3PL consolidator relationships are no longer enterprise problems, they are emerging-brand problems.
DTC economics have compressed. Customer acquisition cost on paid social has roughly doubled in five years. Brands can no longer subsidize operational sloppiness with cheap traffic. The hidden cost of a fragmented stack, overselling on Shopify because wholesale drained the warehouse, chargebacks from retailers because ASNs were wrong, missed monthly close because three different systems disagree on revenue, is now visible in the P&L. Operator-grade ERP pays for itself by eliminating those leaks.
Retailer expectations have hardened. Target's Perfect Order Program, Walmart's vendor scorecards, Sephora's consolidator program, and the lot and expiration documentation now required across the industry have made retailer compliance a structural cost of being in beauty. Brands operating without a system designed for retailer compliance pay this cost in chargebacks and lost reorders rather than in software, and chargebacks compound.
AIMS360 started as apparel software and grew into exactly this operating environment: matrix SKUs, retailer compliance and multichannel inventory. Brands moving from QuickBooks plus Shopify plus spreadsheets, or from a partial Cin7 deployment, or from a stalled NetSuite implementation, all hit the same set of problems at roughly the same stage of growth. AIMS360 solves them in one platform, with a team built from people who have operated inside the industry for decades.
The brands and manufacturers running on AIMS360 today span every category in beauty and personal care, from indie clean beauty launches to nine-figure prestige brands to the domestic manufacturers supplying both. The thread connecting them is that operations is no longer the bottleneck. The brand can focus on product, on marketing, on customer experience, on the things that actually differentiate a beauty brand, because the operating layer underneath is doing its job.
Eco cleaning, laundry and surface brands. Closest formulation and retailer-compliance sibling to cosmetics & beauty.
Compliance, claims, subscription economics. Shares beauty's regulatory and channel patterns.
Same department-store channel mix, Macy's, Nordstrom, Bloomingdale's, Saks, Neiman, Bergdorf.
See AIMS360 configured for your category, your retailers, your channels, your SKU complexity, your 3PL. A 30-minute call gets you a walkthrough. Built on the same engine as the fashion ERP software trusted by 10,000+ consumer brands.
