How should E-commerce sellers manage Inventory?
As a warehouse having worked with over 5k customers probably 10k online stores, one of the serious problems which stop entrepreneurs from making profits or scale their business further is inventory management.No exaggeration, I bet 80% of online sellers don’t know how to manage inventory properly and some even don’t understand the importance of it.
Inventory Affects Your Customer experience
If u prepared very few stocks and u suddenly scaled up and stock isn’t enough, the factory tells u they will need 1 month to produce it. There are only two choices left for u, refund customers or let them wait, and after this unhappy experience on your store, these customer is not going to buy again anymore unless your customer service team is really really excellent at their job
Inventory Affects Your Cashflow
Many customers are so confident about themselves that they bought too much stock ahead before they actually have sales, and these stock will turn into rubbish in a few months or a year if they can't even sell at a cheaper price, inventory money, and stocking fee will push them to throw it. We have seen small sellers having this problem and we have seen big sellers experienced this, sometimes a million-dollar business collapsed because of this
Whats the Key points of Stock Management
Testing phase:
Always test products first, don’t buy much stock first before u actually having sales from the testing phase, we find out the results usually speak louder than words or thinking, which means u just buy stock accordingly when u actually have ordered, this phase is a lot of dropshipping Suppliers like Bestfulfill can help u. Never ever buy just 1k pcs when u sell 10 pcs per day, if u sell 10 pcs per day, at most u prepare 100pcs.
Scaling Phase:
When u actually have stables sales like for 1 week, u may try to scale it more, That’s the part u need really be careful about, because ur sales will triple or even be 10X than a testing phase, spending some time on inventory is definitely worthy of your time
You will need to check 3 things:
how is the current stock left for your product in factory?
By checking this u know how long the inventory will be good for u to keep scaling, if u sell as 100 pcs per day and the factory tell u stock left is around 1k pcs, u know at most u can sell 7-10 days, and after that, the factory will have to start production of the new batch, u might also consider if other marketers are selling it as well, like some bigger sellers who can just sell 1k pcs in one day, this part u need know yourself, know competitors and also factory
Is the communication good with your supplier?
If it takes 2 days for your supplier to get back to u, or u feel their communication is terrible, u better change supplier or stop for a while before scaling, a good supplier is like a barrier between u and the factory to help facilitate all the process of stock checking, price negotiation, etc, if they don't do this part well, your business is in danger.
How long it takes to produce a new batch of inventory?
By asking this, u know when its the time for u to place an order like if their production time is 5 days, and u sell 100 pcs per day, the stock left is like 600 pcs, u know u definitely need to place an order right now or within 1 day to make your orders processed without delay. When it takes them 1 month to produce one batch, it's another story.
Stable Phase
When u sell something stable, u might think of starting to brand it, if u want to know how to brand your products even at the testing phase, u can check out this link: How do Small Sellers or Newbies do Product Branding.
How Bestfulfill can help u with Stock Management
Bestfulfill aims to make order fulfillment much easier for online E-commerce sellers, from product sourcing branding shipping, we offer a one-stop solution to get orders fulfilled at a reasonable price, customers can stay focused to get
Good Language Communication Skills
With the experience of dealing with more than 5k customers, we not only received a high rate customer satisfaction rate, as well accumulated a lot of resources which makes us know our customers better and solve their problems effectively
Free Stock Management
For all clients who use our warehouse to fulfill orders, we offer free warehousing and charge no money for management
Inventory Planing
No matter in which phase, we give customers and clear understanding about stock, constant sales checking, and stock checking to give customers more updates about the stock level and production time.
Conclusion
If u run an online store and u don’t know how to manage inventory properly, talk with our expert now!
