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slow moving inventory

Quit Dusting Your Dead Stock! How Delivery Options Can Boost Slow-Moving Inventory Sales

slow moving inventory

slow moving inventory

Even in a well-run business, there could be 20 to 30% of inventory that is dead stock.

Carrying dead stock and slow-moving inventory can increase your costs and harm the rest of the store.

There are ways you can move these problem items and get the cash your company needs.

Continue reading this article to learn how to keep inventory moving and decrease the time it spends on your shelves.

Say Goodbye to Slow-Moving Inventory

The same shelf of products is staring back at you. It has been for months now and it is taking up valuable retail space. There could be a number of reasons that you have dead inventory on your shelves, such as:

  • Lack of customer interest
  • Selling products that are too similar
  • Failure to train staff to sell a product
  • Defective products

No matter what the reason is for having excess inventory, there are solutions that can help you get those annoying boxes off the shelves.

What Is Dead Stock?

Dead stock is inventory that doesn’t sell. If your company doesn’t use inventory management software, you may have product hiding out in your warehouse for years.

Whether you manufactured the products yourself or brought them through another company, if you aren’t moving inventory, you are amassing costs. The cost of storing the products is only one of the costs. Having old stock in your store can make your store look out of date and behind the times. Instead of looking like a retail professional, your store might look like a once popular liquidation special.

Avoiding Dead Stock

The first step to solving your problem is knowing that you have a problem.

Having software that will alert you when you have an aging inventory will allow you to get to work on a solution.

Instead of the wait and hope “strategy”, you can put systems into place that will help you shed the dead weight.

You might find some of your products aren’t worth saving, and they have to meet the dumpster, but that isn’t always the case. There are many smarts ways to get rid of these products and recoup some of your costs.

Some ideas for cost recouping are:

  • Selling to discount stores
  • Donation to charity (Hello tax write-off)
  • Using it as a gift giveaway with selective purchases
  • Offering the product in a bundle

Inventory should sell in 90-120 days in most situations. After the 90-120 day period, it is time to get concerned.

Since cash flow is the life-blood of any business, you need to get that inventory moving even if it means taking a loss.

Before implementing any of these strategies, make sure you are not continuing to order products that are not selling. If you are getting rid of the product at a discount only to have more come in behind it, you will never be able to solve your problem.

Quick and Free Shipping Are Your Friend

When selling your products online, it is important to have the best shipping services possible. Shipment is one of the determining factors for whether a customer buys your product or a product from your competition. The days when your company could charge hefty fees for shipping are far in the past.

When inventory isn’t moving, you can offer free, fast shipping on those products to get them to move. If the free and fast shipping alone isn’t enough to make them move then offer a deep discount to sweeten the deal. The longer you leave the product on the warehouse shelves, the more money you will put out in expenses.

While you will not make a profit off of these sales, your company will come out better in the long run since you didn’t have to count these products as a total loss.

You can use the situation as a way to win new repeat customers by giving them an amazing first experience. When first-time customers buy one of your deals, they will experience your fast shipping and customer experience.

If you haven’t thought much about your customer experience when they receive your package, this is a point you need to address. Your customer’s first connection with your product is often when they open your package.

Getting Customers to Promote You for Free

Once you’ve wowed your customers with free, fast shipping and a great deal, the experience needs to continue when they open the product package.

Pay special attention to the wrapping of the package, the messaging within the packages and any promotions you include. All these things are part of the customer experience, which will make or break the relationship and any free promotion you get from the customer.

If your packaging is unique, interesting and enjoyable, it is likely they will share it on social media or at least send it to a friend to see. Word of mouth and social media advertising is very powerful and can turn your dead stock into a part of your marketing campaign.

What to Look for in an Order Fulfillment Company

As you choose the company that will fulfill your orders, keep in mind that their commitment to their promises to your customers. If they can’t deliver product when they say they will, your customers are going to blame you, not them.

Working with a company that has a great reputation for following through on their promises is a must. Not only should they offer long-distance shipping, but having same-day delivery allows you to get packages to local customers at the speed of light.

Read customer reviews, speak with the sales team and even call customer service to make sure there is a good match between your companies.

Keep the Inventory Moving and Customer Satisfaction High

Slow-moving inventory can be a thing of the past. Offering the best shipping services to your customers will put you out in front of the competition that is skimping on shipping services. Speak with our professionals today to learn more about how we can help you and your business.

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Common Challenges in Warehouse Logistics and How to Overcome Them

warehouse logistics

Wondering what to do about your warehouse logistics challenges?

Today, e-commerce and other changes have affected the way warehouses operate. Modern warehouses are bigger than ever before and operate differently than they used to. This can mean a whole new host of logistics issues for many companies.

The challenges that your brand faces in warehouse logistics are probably common ones – you’re not alone. In this guide, we’ll go over some of the most common warehouse challenges, and how to address them. Keep reading to learn how to smooth out those rough bits in your warehouse logistics!

What Are Warehouse Logistics?

If you want to understand warehouse logistics, you first need to know what logistics mean in general.

The simplest way to define logistics is as the details inherent in organizing, managing, planning, and implementing complicated operations. In a number of industries, such as the warehouse industry, logistics also includes the way information and physical goods flow.

Warehouse logistics really refers to the whole scope of complicated factors involved in the warehousing process.

The logistics might include things as varied as pest control, safety policies, handling of damaged goods, HR management, customer service, and more.

Why Warehouse Logistics Pose Challenges

Many of the logistical challenges in a warehouse have to do with organization. How is it possible to control every operation detail in a huge warehouse?

It might seem impossible, but it’s necessary – and it’s not really impossible after all. In a warehouse, staff needs to be able to find exactly where specific inventory items are kept, because those items might be damaged, returned, or recalled, for example. This information is crucial for keeping things running smoothly and getting profits flowing in. But it’s not easy to get.

To make logistics work well, you need the right strategies and tools. Meeting these challenges means being flexible enough to beat the competition, while also meeting customers’ expectations, and much more.

Managing a warehouse is no easy task, especially as e-commerce means orders that seem to grow by the day. Let’s take a look at some of the top challenges faced in today’s warehouses, and the strategies for overcoming them.

1. Inaccurate Inventory

The success of warehouse logistics hinges on its inventory. If you can’t know your full inventory, you might run out of stock at a bad time, or keep too much stock instead.

It’s obvious why running out of an item can pose an issue. However, stocking too much of something can also create problems. This reduces the amount of cash flow that can move through the warehouse and adds to the expenses since an excess stock is getting warehoused.

However, having a shortage of inventory is definitely the worse of the two problems. If you don’t have items in stock when they get ordered, you’ll run into customer complaints due to unfulfilled orders. It can be hard to make up your brand’s reputation once that happens to a few customers.

Modern tools can help inventory stay accurate. If you’re not using software to track your inventory, you’ll run into inaccuracies much more often.

2. Poor Inventory Location

When there’s not enough oversight of the inventory, things become more inefficient. That inefficiency results in slower operations and higher costs.

If you don’t know where your inventory is – even if you know that you have it – it will take longer to ship out items once they’ve been ordered. Time gets wasted finding the right things to send to customers.

The loading process then slows down, scheduling gets thrown off, and more issues arise. Warehouse logistics operate in a delicate balance, and one problem can throw off many other areas.

The above-mentioned software can also be useful for tracking inventory location. Make sure all your employees are on board with updating information as needed if items get moved, and make the information easily accessible for everyone who needs it.

3. Bad Warehouse Layout

Space utilization is one of the most important things in a warehouse. Is your warehouse layout helping or hurting?

Having space isn’t the issue. Many warehouses are plenty large for the task. However, they might feel smaller or less organized because the space hasn’t been used wisely. When you optimize that space, you’ll cut down on the needless labor.

For example, keep the inventory that sells often and moves fast near the front of the warehouse. That way, lift drivers don’t need to go all the way to the back of the warehouse for something they’re often retrieving.

4. Repetitive Processes

It’s important to keep things organized and detailed. However, it’s also possible to take things too far and create redundant, repetitive processes that don’t serve the warehouse.

For example, you might find that documentation like pick tickets is getting passed through far more hands than it needs to. Not only is this repetitive, but it also creates more room for errors. A good way to fix this problem is to use barcode technology, so the information is attached to the item and make available to anyone who’s handling it.

5. Picking That’s Not Optimized

Finally, are your picking processes optimized?

If manual processes are still in place at your warehouse, there’s often no regular route taken when items get picked for shipment. This leads to a confusing method that changes depending on who’s working that day.

Avoid adding extra time with un-optimized picking processes. Streamline and automate as much as you can, and you’ll be amazed by how your warehouse logistics improve.

Ready to Upgrade Your Warehouse Logistics?

The world of buying, selling, and shipping has changed. If your warehouse logistics haven’t changed with it, things can quickly become confused and inefficient.

Implementing these strategies to address your logistics concerns will save time, money, and effort throughout the process of getting goods to customers.

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How to Drive More Efficiency with Picking and Packing Best Practices

Want to create more efficiency in your warehouse? Looking for ways to improve your picking and packing processes?

When your warehouse is slow or inefficient, it can cause problems in every part of your business. Because of this, it’s important that you’re always following warehouse best practices and using the best techniques for picking and packing.

Below we’ll look at the very best tips and warehouse organization ideas that can help your team be more efficient in the warehouse than ever before.

1. Perfect Your Storage Plan

One of the most important things you can do to make your warehouse more efficient is to create a great storage plan and find ways to maximize warehouse space. You need to consider the different strategies for your warehouse so that you can store items in a way that makes sense.

Many warehouses are organized very randomly, and items are only placed in whatever space is available at any given time. It’s important to build some kind of organizational strategy that can improve and speed up the picking process.

A volume-based system in which items are organized based on their popularity and how much they are needed is usually a great choice.

It can work well to use a combination of random storage along with a volume storage system. By doing this, you’ll have a section of your warehouse dedicated to high volume areas. However, new items will be placed into any part of that section.

2. Choose Your Picking Strategy Wisely

In addition to having a great storage plan in your warehouse, it’s also crucial to use the best picking strategy you can.

If you have orders that are time sensitive and need to get out of the warehouse fast, it’s important that you have a great picking strategy that can keep up.

There are a few different options that you may not know about, and each comes with their benefits. Here are a few common picking strategies you may want to consider using.

Piece Picking

Piece picking is one of the most popular and common picking strategies. With this method, an order will be picked individually once it comes in. Usually, a worker will simply go into the warehouse and pick the items until an order is filled.

This is a very simple strategy and is usually only best for smaller warehouses.

Batch Picking

Batch picking is one step up from piece picking.

In this case, instead of one order being picked, a worker will pick several different orders at one time. This can work well for a warehouse that has a bit more volume, but can still be slow compared to other methods.

Zone Picking

With a zone picking strategy, workers will be assigned to different areas in the warehouse. They’ll pick their items and place it in a box. If an order requires items from several zones, the box can then be moved to the next section manually or by using a conveyor belt.

While there are other good picking methods, the options above are some of the most popular. It’s important to find the one that works best for your warehouse and the volume you’re experiencing.

3. Only Touch Items Once

One important thing to remember is that you need to minimize touches during the picking and packing process. Using only one touch when picking will prevent errors and eliminate the need for extra repacking and shipping checking.

The picking process needs to be streamlined as much as possible. The best way to do this is to ensure that an item is only touched once. Eliminate the need for smaller containers and make sure that items are being moved from the shelf to the box to a truck.

Having pickers perform the entire move from to the truck in one movement will allow things to go more smoothly.

4. Decrease Worker Movements

Another best practice for improving efficiency is to decrease movement in your warehouse. Make sure that your workers are walking back and forth as little as possible in the warehouse.

When your workers are traveling long distances from Point A to Point B all day long, they can get tired fast. You’ll also be losing a lot of time while they’re in transit.

As a result, decreasing their transit time can be a good part of motivating warehouse staff and ensuring that they remain sharp. Having tired workers around is not good for maximizing efficiency, and it’s possible they’ll make mistakes in their state.

You need to evaluate your picking and packing strategies and take a long look at your storage plan in your warehouse. Chances are that a few changes could really make all the difference.

Consider switching to a zone picking strategy and storing your items in a more logical way. This will reduce the time your workers spend walking around the warehouse.

5. Automate More of Your Picking and Packing Process

When you’re trying to increase efficiency in the warehouse, it’s important to look for every way that you can to incorporate new technology to automate your picking and your packing processes.

You may want to consider installing conveyor belts to move items from different areas of the warehouse as needed. Barcode scanners and similar types of technology are also essential for keeping track of items that leave your warehouse.

Whatever ways you can find to automate warehouse tasks, it can be a big help in improving your process. This will allow you to free up your workers to do more important things. You’ll be able to ensure your warehouse is operating smoothly and efficiently at all times.

Final Thoughts

The process of optimizing and improving warehouse picking and packing strategies is neverending. There are always ways to make things in your warehouse run more smoothly and quickly.

By following the tips above, you’ll already be on the path to success and will ensure you’re making your warehouse more efficient than ever before.

Looking for a great courier service that can meet your needs? Contact us today to learn more about our services and what we can do for you.

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Why Your Shipments Need an Insulated Warehouse

insulated warehouse

Wondering if an insulated warehouse is worth the cost?

When you’re shipping goods, insulation can make a huge difference in ensuring they arrive safely. If your courier service doesn’t have an insulated warehouse, you could run into problems down the road.

This guide will show you everything you need to know about why shipments should have an insulated warehouse so you can make the right decision. Keep reading to learn more!

What Does Insulation Do?

Insulated warehouses have two important benefits: they have stable interior temperatures, and they don’t allow moisture to get inside and collect. This can go a long way toward protecting valuable goods from damage.

Many warehouses are made of materials like metal that offer little to no insulation at all. This allows for huge swings in temperature and damage from water, leading to mold and other issues.

Without insulation, buildings made of metal and many other materials can’t keep heat in during winter or keep the heat out during summer. When the temperature inside varies, moisture is more likely to collect as condensation. This leads to corrosion, rust, and all kinds of other problems in the building.

How Does Insulation Work?

Insulation controls the flow of heat into and out of the building. It also prevents moisture and condensation from forming on the goods stored inside. An insulated warehouse doesn’t allow heat to move as quickly from outside to inside and vice versa, so they’re more energy efficient, as well as better for storage.

Many kinds of insulation contain a vapor retarder that keeps water vapor from passing through, so condensation can’t form inside or on the insulation itself.

A few key terms related to insulation are:

  • U-Value
  • R-Value
  • Vapor Retarder

U-value refers to the thermal performance of the insulation around a building, depending on the materials it’s made out of.

The R-value measures the effectiveness of the insulation, also known as how much thermal resistance it has. A high R-value means the resistance to heat is high, while a low R-value means the resistance is low and the insulation won’t work as well.

Vapor retarder is a fairly self-explanatory term. Vapor retarders prevent or reduce the amount of moisture that can get through the insulation. Vapor retarders often have fire retardant properties, too, making this a great choice for keeping your belongings safe.

Insulation Types

Now, let’s take a look at the different kinds of insulation used for an insulated warehouse.

1. Loose Fill

Loose fill insulation is made with loose fibers or pellets that are projected into the cavities of a building, sort of like water spraying from a hose. This insulation tends to be more expensive than other varieties, but it’s useful for difficult to reach corners that need to be insulated.

2. Batt and Blanket

Batt and blanket insulation is made of fiberglass or rock wool mineral fibers. This is an inexpensive option, but it won’t work unless it’s installed properly.

For metal buildings, batt and blanket insulation with radiant barrier backing are ideal to help control the flow of heat.

This kind of insulation comes in rolls, which can be measured and cut to properly fit the building.

3. Spray Foam

Spray foam insulation is comparable to loose fill insulation since it’s also sprayed into place. This insulation is in liquid form, and contains both an agent to create foaming and a polymer, such as polyurethane.

This type of insulation is easy to spray into the ceiling, floor, walls, or anywhere else insulation is needed. It will automatically expand to fill the space and harden into plastic containing air cells.

If a building has corners that can’t be reached with other insulation types, spray foam insulation can get those spaces completely airtight. Many people use spray foam for buildings with an odd shape or spaces that have obstructions in the way.

Although it costs more than batt and blanket insulation, it also insulates better against air flow.

4. Fiberglass

Fiberglass is one of the cheapest ways to insulate a building. Many homeowners also use fiberglass insulation.

This insulation comes in rolls that are easy to install, even by people who aren’t professionals, although a mask must be worn to prevent the inhalation of dangerous particles. Fiberglass also sheds little fibers, so it shouldn’t be touched with bare hands.

One issue with fiberglass insulation is that it’s soft enough to be penetrated by rodents, birds, and insects looking for a place to nest. It’s also prone to absorbing moisture, so it usually needs a vapor barrier or another protective barrier.

5. Reflective Foil

Reflective foil insulation, also known as foil bubble, is a great choice for waterproofing. Although it’s expensive, it’s easy to install.

6. Rigid Board

Rigid boards made of foam are effective insulators no matter what the climate is. This insulation can be made of a variety of materials, including fiberglass, polyurethane, and polystyrene.

Rigid board insulation comes in a number of different performance ratings, so it can be very effective against moisture and heat when it’s at a high rating. The thickness of the board often determines how effective it is.

7. Insulated Panels

Insulated panels use a core of insulating foam, between two panels made of metal. This is one of the most expensive options, but it offers some of the best insulation out there and is quick to install.

Why Use an Insulated Warehouse?

With so many different insulation options out there, companies can easily insulate a warehouse. If they don’t, it’s a sign that they don’t really care about what’s stored inside.

Insulation helps protect your goods from damage thanks to heat, cold, pests, mildew, and many other problems. Many types of insulation also help protect from fires, leaks, and other more serious issues.

If you’re shipping goods, you need to seek out an insulated warehouse to make sure they arrive at their destination safely. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing a lot of money in the process.

Looking for the best courier service to protect your goods? ASAP Courier & Logistics can help – check out the contact page now to get started.

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