Losing money with slow-moving inventory is easy
Slow-moving inventory is a nightmare for all business owners. One of the key elements of successful inventory management is giving constant attention to the quality of your merchandise and always knowing what sells and when it sells.
Niche products usually are the cause of slow-moving inventory especially if they are sold on a niche market. Although some products are valued at a higher price than the one they are actually sold for, it’s still better to sell an item with a low profit margin or even at a small loss compared to having it take up shelf space.
An item should sell after a maximum 90-120 days. In case it does not sell, then it’s about time to get rid of it. Holding on to slow-moving inventory means paying for the shelf space occupied by it. Products should circulate at a fast pace but even if you do extensive market research, you will still not be able to forecast your sales with pinpoint accuracy and you will surely encounter situations in which your merchandise just doesn’t sell as quickly as you’d like it to.
How can you get rid of inventory that just won’t sell?
What to do in those cases? Well, first off, you should figure out a strategy which involves having a sale. Regardless if it’s a flash sale or a clearance sale, each year should consist of at least 6-8 serious promotions that would completely free up space in your filled up storage unit or facility.
There are cases when business owners choose to have clearance sales accessible to their customers at all times. So whenever you feel like some of your inventory must simply go, add it to that section on your e-commerce site where you advertise items on sale. Your visitors will surely come back for more and continue to subscribe to your site for new and exciting price promotions.
Re-positioning and re-marketing your products will help you sell items that haven’t been correspondingly marketed . Hey, mistakes happen to everyone so giving your products a fresh look from time to time will boost your sales and fix your slow-moving inventory issues.
You should also focus on improving your SEO. Search engine optimization is a key factor of highly sustainable business. As soon as you start using better keywords to describe your products, they will attract a higher number of visitors to your website, thus helping you clearing space in your storage space.
Some retailers struggling with slow-moving inventory sell products in bundles. This is done by slightly lowering the price of the products sold in a group compared to selling them separately. You can either bundle more items of the same product or bundle fast-moving products with slow-moving products, to increase the activity in your inventory.
One of the best incentives for potential buyers is a free gift or buying something at an ultra-low-cost price. Even the smallest of incentives can be extremely effective when it comes to driving the buyer to your desired results.
Raise the number of your visitors by offering a free gift per email subscription. Or offer free products and have the buyer cover the shipping costs.
Or, of course, use products as incentives to increase your clients’ order size. For example, set a threshold of 100$ per each order and once a visitor reaches that amount, offer them free shipping or a free gift, which is a slow-moving inventory item.
These methods should suffice for getting rid of slow-moving inventory.
An inventory management app such as NVentree will help you be aware of everything that is happening with your merchandise, across multiple platforms, such as eBay, Amazon and your shopping cart from one easy-to-use interface, instead of having to log into each channel separately. And all this in real-time.