Seasonal inventory is a familiar task for many retailers. Having special items that only sell by season, by year, or even during a certain holiday, is a product fulfillment duty that is crucial to the overhead of any business. Whatever the case, the most important aspect to managing seasonal inventory is proper planning. That can be done in several ways, from identifying merchandise all the way to reordering.
Marking Seasonal Merchandise
It seems like such a simple step, and it really is. Marking your seasonal inventory doesn’t take much effort, but it goes a long way to ensuring ideal inventory turnover. And like we briefly mentioned, finding ways to identify seasonal inventory can be catalogued in many ways. Whether you’re a clothing store marking inventory by season, or a technology store ramping up for back to school—creating a system of identifying which pieces of inventory belong to each “season” prevents over-ordering and provides you with the accurate counts to store away unsold products.
Marking Items Down
Seasons are, of course, time specific. You are only offering that product for an anticipated length of time and then that product will no longer be on display. That means once the season is nearing its end, you need to clear as much inventory as possible and that can be done by marking down prices. How you go about doing so depends on what kind of business you’re in, what stage of business you’re in, and what makes financial sense for your company. But unsold inventory doesn’t make sense for any business and having a well-planned, strategic system for marking down items is a good way to offload seasonal items and make way for new products. It also gives you some insight into consumer behavior that can better prepare you for the next time that specific season comes around.
Reordering
What better predictor of how this season’s sales will go than assessing last season’s sales figures. That means it becomes important to have a solid system, which typically includes some type of software, which can easily locate purchases from the previous season to give you the best stats available for future orders. Of course other factors must be taken into consideration, including any change in trends or any significant economic disturbances.
Partnering with the Right 3PL
Finding ways to manage seasonal inventory is an important part of proper budgeting and product fulfillment. Businesses can easily lose funds if this aspect of their business isn’t managed correctly. Partnering with a product fulfillment company like APS Fulfillment, Inc. takes all the guesswork out of how to properly structure a system for managing seasonal inventory. We have an experienced team of workers and the right technology to make these transitions seamless from season to season and year to year. APS Fulfillment, Inc. is a specialist in warehouse order fulfillment based in Florida. Visit our web site and contact us for more tips on how to identify the best shipping fulfillment strategies.
