All business owners hate to have obsolete or expired stock laying around in their warehouses and in order to avoid money-losing situations stock rotation is a life saver. If you’re wondering what stock rotation actually is, it’s the process of organizing inventory to mitigate the stock loss caused by expiration or obsolescence.
It’s a practice mostly used in hospitality and retail, especially in food stores such as restaurants and supermarkets.
Why? Well, because moving products with an earlier sell-by date to the front of a shelf or in the cooler helps them get picked up and sold first. Moving products with a later sell-by date to the back is also part of the in-store stock rotation protocol.
You will definitely have to set your priorities straight in regards to your stock products, as in order to create enough space for your fast moving inventory and operate at your highest productivity, it is imperative that you identify and manage slow-moving inventory as soon as possible.
In case a certain product is still available on shelves or, in the case of online shops, in the warehouse after its sell-by date, you will have to get rid of it. This is both costly and wasteful. Just think of the suppliers that must be paid even if their merchandise is not sold. You realize, of course, just how imperative it is to have products which will perish earlier to be sold as quickly as possible. When you have slow-moving inventory on your shelves, it has a really powerful impact on almost everything behind it.
If you own an online business or in case you are a warehouse manager, it’s of utmost importance to find a way to get rid of these slow-moving items as efficiently and profitably as possible. There are multiple ways to ensure getting rid of older stock. For example, if a product is close to its sell-by date, you may reduce stock or lower its price in order for it to be more appealing to your customers.
Reduced stock is usually included in the rotation of stock, and is therefore moved to the front of the shelf ahead of any non-reduced stock. Slow-moving inventory is frustrating for a number of reasons. Not only does it hurt your sales totals and bottom line, but it also eats up warehouse space that could be utilized to stock faster-selling. When rotating your inventory, try to keep the newest products in the back, third oldest in the middle back, second oldest in the middle front and, naturally, the oldest products in the front.
We can all agree that inventory management is more than just a way of ensuring your business is flourishing, helping you know exactly what stock you have, which needs to be updated or how orders affect the exact quantity of your available merchandise etc. And although NVentree will help you update your stocks and basically manage everything from one simple interface instead of logging in to separate channels, you will have to take care of your stock by yourself. The app can help you set the rules for your stock rotation in a way of always being notified when old stock needs to be pushed forward for faster inventory flow.
Keep in mind that regardless of your domain or type of products you are selling, it is important to rotate stock in all areas: retail display area, warehouse, factory, and so on. The reason to rotate stock is to reduce the losses from deterioration and obsolescence while keeping your inventory fresh at all times. Be careful, though, to select your audience correctly! When applied to large amounts of items, stock rotation can be not difficult, but almost impossible, as a small mistake can disrupt the whole rotation and thus create problems in stock.
Using NVentree to manage your stock will surely help you prevent those types of mistakes simply because it allows you to export orders and lists to CSV spreadsheets and also connect to a number of APIs to download orders and update stocks, making your whole inventory management easy. Being well informed in regards to your own stock should be a motto for your online multi-channel business so you should definitely allow NVentree to become your silent but efficient inventory helper.