Forum Moderators: buckworks
What strategies or advice can you give about keeping on top of your inventory?
Upsells.
Jobbers.
We get rid of excess merchandise in that order.
When I have the energy, I'll probably donate some of them.
what are jobbers?
To add to EB's answer, they will buy your inventory for pennies on the dollar. May seem like a big loss, but when you consider the alternative is taking up space that you may need for "good" merchandise, many people turn to them to sell their inventry to.
For small quantities, we sell to our employees. You could also try having a "yard sale" for local customers or donating them product to a charity and writing it off.
I have a huge dataBase of strong buyers, my solid regular customers, and they certainly love a good deal. Problem is I don't want to ruin them with a flood of crappy merchandise sold at my cost. For one thing, they'd get stuck with slow-moving stinkers which would haunt their future opinion/ re-ordering of my products. They won't remember the bargain offload price. They'll only see unsold, dead merchandise and think of me, full of resentment at having been duped, burning with regret over getting suckered into a ton of junk, just because they couldn't resist a bargain...
I also figure they'll wonder why they were able to buy at half price once, and demand the same when they view my prime, regular merchandise. Or at least forevermore view my pricing with a jaundiced eye.
My overstocks & crrrap need to move out in the hundreds of pieces, or at least 50 or so at a pop, not a few at a time as most are ordinarily sold. I'm not gonna post a product onsite, then fill orders for the next 6 months until it's gone -if ever- all at a loss, or breakeven. No, I want the stuff gone and quickly. It's hard to find a regular buyer who'll take a 'truckload' of weak products, even if they're cheap cheap cheap.
The really, really important thing is to spot the bad inventory EARLY while you still may be able to market it at a reasonable price. If you sell fruit or fish, your inventory will let you know when it is going bad; if you sell computer parts, fashion merchandise, or anything else, though, you'll have to rely on your sales tracking systems.
I've had good luck with closeout flyers (by mail) or "specials" pages (on the web) to move odds and ends at a reasonable price. If you've made a major buying error, though, relying on some kind of jobber/liquidator may make sense.
There's a tradeoff in self-liquidation. While you don't want to tarnish your image with your regular customers, low cost closeouts can be a way to bring you new buyers and re-activate old buyers. Any DMer will tell you that a customer has significant lifetime value - use your closeouts as a competitive tool if you can.
>>it is taking up a big part of my office now
When it starts taking up a big part of your warehouse, you've got real trouble. ;)
