Since 2015, GOAT Group has become the world’s leading apparel & sneaker marketplace. GOAT calls itself “the global platform for the greatest products from the past, present and future,” and it now serves over 30 million members across 170 countries through digital platforms (Grailed, Sneakers.com, alias) and retail locations like Flight Club.
Powering this operation is GOAT’s accounting team led in part by Chris Skinner, Director of Accounting. He represents a finance organization that has evolved from manual work to creating rigorous financial processes. Doing so has required Skinner not only assembling a skilled team, but also getting the right tools — an attitude that led him right to Numeric.
When Skinner joined GOAT four years ago, the mission was clear: build an accounting function that would be ready to perform no matter what direction the company should take.
"I was pretty much the first hire of the revamping of the accounting team," explains Skinner. "We laid out what we would need to create the kind of accounting team that could meet SOX standards and started assembling the right combination of people and tools to do just that."
What followed was a complete rebuild. The team hired everyone over the next two years and brought in a new controller with experience in public markets readiness. This wasn't just about adding people—it was about fundamentally changing how the organization approached financial processes and internal controls.
As GOAT's business complexity grew, their spreadsheet-based systems showed limitations that wouldn't work at enterprise scale or meet SOX requirements.
"Pre-Numeric, we had everything in either Excel or Google Sheets for anything that we were tracking," Skinner notes. "We had a close checklist that was Google Sheet-based, and it was so much more difficult to have multiple people collaborating on it."
The challenges went far beyond collaboration issues. The team faced inefficiencies stemming from static data, limited analysis capabilities, basic reconciliation issues and control gaps. For a company operating at GOAT's scale across multiple entities and global markets, these limitations created real operational and compliance risks.
Implementing Numeric in 2023 marked a fundamental shift in how GOAT approached financial processes, moving from basic spreadsheet management to much more sophisticated operations.
The biggest transformation came via Numeric's live NetSuite integration, which eliminated the static data problems that had plagued their previous processes.
"Massively outweighing any other Numeric benefit is the accuracy that it gives us," notes Skinner. "Always knowing what we're reviewing is accurate to what's in NetSuite at this very moment is hugely beneficial."
This real-time connectivity enabled several critical improvements:
Speaking to the benefits surrounding flux analysis and reconciliations, Skinner adds:
“With Numeric set up, you know it’s going to give you real-time, repeatably good variance explanations account by account. And you don’t have to do any additional prep work; you get straight to the analyzing — “Is this accurate or not?” — every time.”
For Karan Kawatra, an Accounting Manager, at GOAT, one of the most striking differences was how intuitive Numeric felt compared to other enterprise software.
"Super user friendly. Everything is easy to find. Nothing is in difficult language," explains Kawatra. "All the graphics are actually useful. I don't feel like I'm searching for anything I need. Filters are super easy to use."
The platform's monitoring capabilities have been particularly valuable for managers maintaining oversight across teams. Kawatra has set up transaction monitors that help ensure team members are properly addressing their assigned accounts, with automated tracking that eliminates manual follow-up work.
"It gives me great comfort," explains Kawatra. "I can actually feel confident running financials and sending them off to the next person.”
Since implementing Numeric, GOAT has achieved the operational sophistication expected of a multi-billion dollar enterprise. In particular, they’ve been able to shave down from an 8-day lingering, never truly finished close to a 5-day close that’s confidently complete.
The transformation has been particularly evident in GOAT's relationship with their external auditors from PwC.
"When we're talking about what controls we have around variances, we show them the explanations and follow-up questions in Numeric," explains Skinner. "I have to believe that they gain comfort and are a more pleasing partner to us in an audit process because we have Numeric. Because we’re not saying 'don't worry, we know we've covered everything because we have this Google sheet.’"
Perhaps most importantly, Numeric has given GOAT a foundation that can scale with their continued growth and increasing sophistication requirements.
"We're happy and comfortable that we have the framework to build clearly more stringent control processes on," notes Skinner.
This foundation means GOAT can keep improving their processes without rebuilding their fundamental infrastructure: an advantage for rapidly growing companies of their type.
GOAT Group's journey shows that the right financial technology does more than just save time—it gives companies the solid processes and oversight they need to operate at the highest level. With Numeric, they've built a financial foundation that supports both where they are today and where they want to go.
For GOAT, this means they can keep growing their global marketplace while staying on top of the detailed financial work that matters most.
AI-assisted. Operationally efficient. Audit ready.
