Whether you have your inventory on a shelf, in your dining room, or if you have a whole warehouse to work with, every reseller needs to have inventory organization and processes in place. We have tried many different methods, and ultimately found the best ways to revolutionize your inventory. But to understand this new method, you first have to understand the Top 3 Inventory Mistakes with Reselling Sally, and why you should avoid them!
1. Organizing Like with Like
If you are organizing your bookshelf, closet, or any other area, organizing like with like seems a great thing to do! It makes it easier to know where to go to find things and keeps your space neat and tidy. Many resellers automatically transfer this way of thinking into the organization of their inventory. But this actually causes a bigger problem when it comes to locating an item quickly to ship it. Say Sally the reseller decided to organize her inventory this way. She has some big shelves in her closet, with labeled bins on each shelf. Among the shelves you can find labels such as "men's trousers" or "children's tops." Now, Sally made a sale of a child's blue short sleeve tshirt. She goes to her bin, and to her dread, she finds that every shirt looks the same! Most of them are blue, most of them are short sleeve, and now she just burned way too much time searching the tag of every top to find the right one. This is the reason that organizing like with like actually puts a burden into reselling. To learn the alternative organizational method to this, read on to Part 2 of Revolutionizing Your Inventory.
2. Thinking Small
It's easy to fall into the trap of thinking small, and not planning for growth. Sally only started reselling as a hobby. She had a shelf in a closet, and started from there, grouping like with like in the bins. It was easy at first. The closet was all she needed for her inventory. One thing Sally didn't see coming, however, was that over half of her items sold in one week! So, following Part 2 of" Growing Your Inventory," she reached out to her friends for donated items. Boy, did they come through! She had bags and boxes of new inventory overflowing from her small space. But because Sally had like with like, some of her bins were overflowing while others were empty. Such a waste of space! Not planning for growth meant that Sally was unprepared for the influx of customers, orders, and inventory that came her way. Now, Sally has started thinking big, asking questions she should have asked earlier, such as: where can I store my inventory? What will I do with new sales? and more.
3. Getting in Your Head
Or rather, staying in your head. Starting out, it is relatively easy to keep track of everything in your head. As you get bigger, you start to need a system. Up until this point, Sally had just been keeping track of her items in her head. Then, as all of her friends donated items to her, she upgraded to using spreadsheets. This is a first step to getting out of her head. The danger with not doing so is that unlisted inventory can slip under the radar, sold items can be difficult or impossible to locate in a timely way, and ultimately she could lose clients and sales. That is why the next step to moving forward in this direction is to get a bigger tool to keep track of all those little details. Our personal favorite tool? You guessed it - Binin! Say goodbye to mental multitasking and inventory issues! Why not skip the steps of pencil/paper and spreadsheets and go straight to the system that will grow with you small to full time! Learn more about Binin here.
Happy reselling!