When you are in the business of selling products, there are a lot of things that you have to manage. You need to maintain good relationships with your suppliers so you can get the best prices for your raw materials. If you do not have your own warehouse, you can get a lease for one and you also need to agree to some terms with its owner. Manufacturing your goods will also cost you, that is why you should yield the most quantities possible out of your factory or operations center.
Churning out your products does not equate to your income yet. Of course, you have to sell some quantities before you turn a profit. But there could be times when you have something that does not move out as fast as you want them to. You have to formulate strategies to get them flying off the shelves.
Inventory Matters
Your inventory can tell a lot about your company. If you are able to see different kinds of boxes or pallets stored in your warehouse, that means you have a diversified line up of products. If your shelves are lightly populated, it could be that you are selling loads of your products, or you may not be manufacturing fast enough to fill them. Full shelves, on the other hand, is not always a good thing because it can signify that your offerings may not be answering people’s demands. But if that is not the case, then everyone will have a field day since they will not experience a shortage of stocks.
Basically, managing your inventory should be a mix of availability, scalability, and mobility.
Heavy Discounts
Offering your products at competitive pricing is one way to move your inventory. Customers will find it enticing when they are given significant rebates and/or incentives. You can just slash the price outright or on future purchases. The latter is a tactic that can give you a great chance at having repeat purchases or returning buyers. You can also frame it as a limited offer, so the people will have a sense of urgency in purchasing your products.
It is imperative for you to move your inventory as fast as you can. The longer they stay in stock, the lower their value will become. Giving them at lower prices may lower your profits, but that would be better than incurring some losses.
Bundle Programs
Products that are doing well in sales can be used to leverage some slow-moving products. Take a company that sells sports goods for example. If they have items that could make up an ensemble for a tennis player, they could bundle up their top-selling tennis rackets with socks that have been stuck on the shelves for a while. This is also a tactic that you can use to introduce new products to the market. It is basically riding on the coattails of the best-sellers, but it is also a quick way to get into the market’s consciousness.
Offering freebies can fall in the same principle. The products here do not necessarily have to be selling in droves, but they should have high margins. This is the only way that you can offer another product for free because the higher profit numbers will offset the value of that item.
Repackaging and Rebranding
Some products just need to be presented in a new light. You can do this by either repackaging or rebranding your offerings.
Repackaging is simply giving your product a facelift. It can be a total redesign of the box or wrapper, with the expectation that they will garner more attention. It is also done when you want to align a common design philosophy if you have many products on the store shelves.
The act of rebranding is not just about giving the product a new look, it is more about reintroducing it to the same or new target markets. For example, your mid-range refrigerator of today may be rebranded as the entry-level model of the future. Technology moves at a fast pace, and most of the new features are put first on the upper-tier product lines. But that is not to say that the budget-conscious folk will not have a taste of those ever, because they can expect lower prices around a year later.
Having some slow-moving items in your inventory is not the end of the world. You can still employ strategies to make them move. You may see this as a setback, but you can also view this as a learning experience. Your new-found knowledge should help you make a product that is more enticing to customers.
