Getting Ready for Christmas – How to Manage Inventory and Stock
Holiday inventory, or seasonal inventory, refers to products in high demand specifically during certain times of the year. These high demand products tend to have higher sales velocity which is affected by the holidays, changes in weather, or special events.
As a small business, your holiday inventory might be your best sellers and sometimes you might have a Christmas package that you have put together and are selling. The holiday season is often stressful for everyone involved, but with proper holiday inventory management, your business can thrive to its fullest potential.
Lets talk about how to manage inventory and stock for this Christmas
1. Keeping track of your inventory is crucial regardless of whether you have a single-channel or omnichannel strategy for your business. During the holidays, inventory management software, such as restaurant inventory software, will do much of the work for you. It can help with reordering and prevent stockouts. You may want to consider using a centralized inventory system and an inventory scanner to conduct inventory checks. Digistore Business Manager App offers an inventory system where you can see all of your products and the quantity left.
2. Set Stock Levels
After forecasting your demand for the holiday season, you can gauge the products you need to have in stock. Once you do this, you can set your stock levels to make sure that your inventory levels don’t fall below that standard.
Something to consider is setting a reorder point. This way, your business can automatically reorder products that are low in stock. You can do so in app as well. You can set when a stock will be low so you can replenish it.
3. Two of the biggest concerns during the holiday season are product shortages and slow shipping times. In this case, transportation In fact, many customers start their holiday shopping before Black Friday in order to ensure they have their orders fulfilled in time. So it is advisable to buy in bulk and set up your packages. Even with accurate demand forecasting, it’s impossible to predict the exact customer need. This means that you have to develop a plan before holiday shopping begins in order to optimize stock replenishment. As a result, you can prevent stock-outs and fulfill demand spikes.
When Should you manage your inventory?
All the time. Businesses should manage their inventory not just during specific times of the year, but all year round in order to sell these products at a higher velocity. During the holiday season, businesses tend to see an increase in seasonal demand and this can cause them to stock up on holiday-specific items that may not sell year-round.
