From Spreadsheet Sprawl to Operational Backbone: How Spade to Fork Scaled
An organic gardening supply business ditched their unwieldy spreadsheets and found a system that could track shared materials across hundreds of SKUs.
Meet Spade to Fork.
Spade to Fork is a family-run, certified organic farm nestled in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Founded by Jeff and Anna Kathrein, the business grew from a simple family moment: watching their kids dig in the dirt, tend their plants, and proudly harvest their own meals.
"We realized how disconnected we'd become from the food on our table," Jeff explains. That backyard epiphany sparked something bigger: a mission to revive homegrown foods and share the joy of garden-to-table living with others.
Today, Spade to Fork sells organic gardening kits and supplies - seeds, pots, tools, and more - through Amazon, Shopify, and Faire, with brick-and-mortar retail on the horizon. Every product is packed on their farm and shipped directly to customers.
But scaling a seed and gardening supply business comes with a unique challenge: shared materials across hundreds of SKUs.
When projecting production, I need to track shared materials across multiple SKUs so I can order accurately and avoid stockouts or overstock.
Before Craftybase, Jeff managed this complexity with a highly customized network of spreadsheets. It worked - for a while. But as their product line and sales channels expanded, the system became unwieldy.
"We transitioned away from spreadsheets to prevent costly errors in formula logic," Jeff says. The fear wasn't just inconvenience - it was the risk of real financial mistakes during critical growth phases.
The anticipated expansion into brick-and-mortar required stronger inventory planning. Our spreadsheet network had become unwieldy.
Outgrowing your spreadsheets? Get inventory control that scales with your business.
Try Craftybase free for 14 daysJeff started researching small business inventory tools. He looked at enterprise-level systems like Odoo and Katana, but found them overly complex and expensive for what Spade to Fork needed.
"We compared Craftybase with complex, costly systems," Jeff recalls. "But Craftybase offered the better price-to-value ratio."
What convinced him? An affordable, intuitive interface. A responsive support team. And most importantly: the right balance of features for a small manufacturing business - including the shared components functionality he desperately needed.
Craftybase offers a sense of structure, automation, and reduced oversight burden. It's become our operational backbone.
Since 2023, Spade to Fork has used Craftybase to centralize their inventory, manufacturing, and purchasing operations. Jeff uses the platform to enter purchases, plan manufacturing batches, and track the seasonal peaks that are inherent to the gardening business.
The Shopify and Faire integrations handle sales syncing automatically - no more manual reconciliation across systems. And with multi-channel visibility, Jeff can confidently engage larger retail contracts without fear of system breakdowns.
"I need reliable reporting to confidently engage in larger contracts," Jeff explains. That's especially important as they expand into brick-and-mortar retail.
We see Craftybase as a long-term partner. We want the platform to grow alongside us as we expand to retail.
For Jeff, the transition from spreadsheets to Craftybase wasn't just about better software - it was about building the foundation for growth. With seasonal manufacturing cycles, shared materials across hundreds of SKUs, and expansion into new sales channels, Spade to Fork needed a system that could scale.
They found it.
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