Accurate demand planning is essential, as it ensures that you always have the right products on your shelves. Correctly predicting customer demand also means that stores don’t have lots of unsold inventory that ties up valuable capital.  In this post, you’ll learn how demand planning contributes to better supply chain management. What is demand planning? The term “demand planning” is part of the supply chain management cycle. As a retailer, you are forecasting a product’s demand so there are always enough items on the shelves for customers to buy. You also want to avoid a surplus of prod ..read more

No matter how good you are at inventory management, chances are you’re going to over-order from time to time. And when you do, you’re left with dead stock. Dead stock is excess stock that you do not expect to sell. In some cases, it can be very easy to quickly recognize dead stock. For instance, if a grocery store has a crate of apples that rot, they can’t expect to sell those — turning those apples into dead stock.  In other cases, it can be harder to recognize the difference between dead stock and slow-moving inventory. For instance, most clothing items shouldn’t become completely unse ..read more

In retail, stocking up on products and seeing what sticks — or worse — hoping for the best is hardly an effective strategy.  In order to generate sales and move merchandise, everything you purchase in your store must be planned in advance. You need to figure out: What items you’ll stock up on How much to order When you’ll sell them What you’ll do in case they don’t sell as planned All of the above can be encompassed in this thing we like to call inventory planning. And this article will give you a quick guide on what it is and how to implement it.  Let’s dive in.  What is inv ..read more

As 2021 comes to a close, we figured it’s high time to look back at some of the most popular blog posts of the year. Aside from shedding light on which topics resonated with the retail community, we hope this list helps uncover insights and learnings that you can take into 2022.  Some of the common themes that came up this year include the following: Inventory management and reporting continue to be popular areas of interest among retailers Readers want to learn more about how to improve their marketing efforts Keeping employees motivated is also a key priority in retail There’s a lot ..read more

This is a guest post by Diana Ford.  Most people have already switched to online shopping. It is more convenient, especially because of COVID-19 restrictions and closed physical retail stores during coronavirus outbreaks. The number of digital purchasers is increasing more and more every year. According to Statista, e-retail sales surpassed 4 trillion globally in 2020. At the same time, the retail market sector grew up to $25 trillion in 2021 (based on the eMarketer’s statistics). Both ecommerce shops and physical retail stores are at a firm pace of growth. The e-retail market niche is m ..read more

As a retailer, there are many metrics and reports that you need to track, and one of the most important retail KPIs to keep an eye on is your sell-through rate. Monitoring and optimizing sell-through will enable you to move products faster, reduce overstock, and ultimately have better cash flow in your ecommerce or retail business. Let’s break down all the key things you need to know about sell-through and how to improve it.  What is sell-through in retail? Sell through is a metric that indicates how fast your inventory is selling. It represents the percentage of units sold versus the nu ..read more

As any retailer would tell you, purchasing inventory comes with a certain amount of risk. Stocking retail products typically follows the process where the retailer purchases goods from the supplier then sells those products for a profit.  However, if customers don’t purchase enough merchandise, the retailer is stuck with unsold products that they either need to markdown or unload. This is where consignment inventory comes into play. Consigned inventory reduces the retailer’s risk because the consignor (i.e., the supplier or vendor) retains ownership of the merchandise until they’re sold ..read more

Good inventory management is essential to running a successful business. But stats suggest this is an area that many retailers are struggling to get a good grasp on: Good inventory management is essential to running a successful business. But stats suggest this is an area that many retailers are struggling to get a good grasp on: 34% of businesses have shipped an order late due to accidentally selling a product that was not in stock. Global inventory distortion (shrinkage, stockouts, and overstock) costs businesses an estimated $1.1 trillion annually The demand for inventory management softw ..read more

Managing a retail store is far from easy. Retailers, regardless of their size or industry, face similar challenges. As a store manager, you’re tasked with developing your team, keeping customers happy, ensuring healthy stock levels, and a host of other responsibilities. Staying on top of everything not only requires a solid skillset, but you must also have the right mindset to succeed.  To help you level up your retail management game, we asked a handful of experts to share their best pieces of advice for store managers.  Have a look at what they had to say below.   Hire f ..read more

Managing inventory is one of the most challenging parts of being a retailer. It’s also one of the most important. If you don’t have good insight into how much your inventory is worth, it’s impossible to understand the financial position of your business. By undertaking regular inventory valuation, retailers can build an accurate picture of how much their inventory is costing them over time — and how the value of this asset is affecting their tax obligations and profitability. In this post, we’re going to define what inventory valuation is and the different inventory valuation methods that ret ..read more