Her Playbook Saved Startups Millions. So She Made It Her Own.

Bellamy Grindl didn’t set out to become a consultant. She just kept getting hired to fix the same problem, over and over again.

She’d spent nearly 20 years working in retail—big names like Gap and Walmart, plus digitally native brands and startups of all shapes and sizes. And whether it was a unicorn or a company on the edge, they all seemed to hit the same wall: too much inventory, too little planning, and zero data discipline when it actually mattered.

“Every company I joined, I was doing the same thing,” she says. “Setting up their demand planning. Building their data infrastructure. Trying to help them stop flying blind.”

So in 2021, when her last company shut down, she made the jump. Bellamy launched Retailytics, a boutique consultancy that helps founder-led consumer brands stop throwing spaghetti at the wall and start making smarter, more strategic decisions. She doesn’t just help them get organized—she helps them build the planning, merchandising, and data muscles they need to scale.

“Most of these companies start with strong marketing,” she explains. “But when it comes time to optimize the backend—forecasting, inventory, product development—they’re winging it. That’s where I come in.”

Bellamy didn’t grow up wanting to work in retail. She actually started out in investment banking—until she realized she hated every second of it. Fashion was always the dream, but she didn’t know what a career in the industry could look like. Then she found planning: a numbers-first, spreadsheet-heavy discipline that fit her analytical strengths and gave her a way in.

She cut her teeth at Ralph Lauren, working in children’s wear at a time when the brand had just brought that category back in-house. It felt like a startup inside a massive company—messy, fast, and full of process-building. After that, she joined Gilt Groupe, back when it was still scaling like crazy. “I was there from startup to unicorn to fire sale,” she says. “I saw how everything changed.”

From there came the big-box chapter at Gap (which she hated), then a more creative stint on the incubation team at Walmart, where she helped launch digitally native brands across everything from apparel to supplements to bedding. But after a string of startups—and a series of shutdowns—she realized something had to shift.

She wasn’t just doing repeatable work. She was building a repeatable system.

“At every stop, I was solving the same core problems,” she says. “Eventually I realized—I don’t need to do this one company at a time. I can build a business around it.”

Retailytics didn’t land fully formed. The first year was all trial and error—figuring out what work she liked, who she could actually help, and what kind of consulting model made sense. She even considered quitting altogether and getting into real estate. But when the right clients started showing up—growth-stage brands doing $15M to $250M in annual revenue—things clicked.

“These are companies that haven’t built out planning, buying, or data science teams yet,” she says. “I can come in as a fractional lead, build the strategy, execute it, and train up a junior team to run it after I leave.”

For bigger companies, she does project-based work. And lately, with all the layoffs across retail, even established brands are leaner than ever—which makes her kind of support even more valuable.

But Bellamy knows the real win isn’t just cleaning up messes—it’s helping founders avoid them in the first place.

“Inventory isn’t a problem… until it’s a massive one,” she says. “And for most early-stage founders, it gets ignored until it’s too late.”

That’s why she’s now building a new offering: an on-demand class to help smaller brands get ahead of their operations curve. Most of the founders she works with only call her once their cash is tied up in bad buys or stalled product. But she wants to create a system founders can plug into before they get in trouble—especially those not ready for full-time planning support.

“I want to help them think holistically about how inventory impacts cash flow,” she says. “It doesn’t need to be a five-alarm fire if you build the right foundation early.”

The job isn’t glamorous. Bellamy is still in spreadsheets constantly. She’s juggling multiple clients, making fractional support work, and doing the strategy and execution herself. But it’s exactly the kind of work she loves.

“I like helping people solve messy problems,” she says. “And I like being in environments where change is actually possible.”

Retailytics isn’t just about structure—it’s about momentum. It’s the strategic muscle most early-stage brands don’t realize they’re missing—until Bellamy shows them how much stronger they can be.

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