Inventory management for apparel store

Best practices for inventory management in an apparel store

Effective inventory management is critical for any apparel store’s success. It ensures you are not wasting money on excess stock or you are not disappointing customers with no supplies. Your store has the optimum number of items to address customers’ needs.

Yes, achieving this is challenging, but not impossible. You can adopt the following tricks and practices to track your inventory:

Implement a retail POS system

An integrated point-of-sale system can help keep your inventory in check. This system will allow you to enter details of every item purchased from suppliers. You will have attributes such as name, product category, size, color, barcode, etc., for every product item.

Such POS for inventory management must be accessible from any device and location. Thus, you can look at and analyze the inventory status at any time. You can set up an alert when the stock drops below a pre-defined limit. Based on this alert, you can order the next batch of clothing items.

Whenever a sale happens, or an item is returned, the inventory count is updated automatically. You can also study the inventory details to generate insights for understanding what sells more and other data. Thus, a retail POS system keeps your inventory accurate and your display shelves well-organized and full.

You can get such a perfectly fitting retail POS system from Websys Infotech. Their retail management software solutions find audiences in many startups and large enterprises. Their retail POS software is a complete solution serving business needs in different industry sectors.

Manual counting is essential

Implementing a retail POS system is vital, but you cannot shy away from manual work. You must do it to ensure everything is in line and no significant discrepancies are occurring in the store. Conduct such manual counting randomly at frequent intervals.

With the POS system in place, this process becomes more manageable. Get the inventory count from your POS system, manually count one product category, and match it with the POS number. This ensures that your POS is accurate and has no excess or missing stock.

Organize your merchandise supply process

When you receive stocks from suppliers, check them manually and update them in the system. Suppliers send a list of all the items with details in the shipment. Before arranging the received items in the warehouse, count them manually.

Do this exercise when the truck is unloaded. Physically count the items and match them with the list from the supplier to see if you have received everything in good condition. If there are any defective pieces or missing items, you can notify the supplier for refunds or replacements.

Keep your sales floor organized

A best practice for ensuring effective inventory management is keeping your sales floor well-organized. Such an orderly look makes a good impression on potential customers visiting your store. Also, it guarantees that you never lose or misplace any item.

You can organize shelves by brands, sizes, colors, types, or discount-specific. Organize clothes well in a consistent style – either folded or hung. Ensure that you keep the clothes properly under clear labels in the warehouse as well to reduce confusion. Customers feel happy with the neat and clean look, contributing to a better shopping experience.

Thus, adopt these best practices for your apparel store to track the movement of items. It ensures proper functioning of your apparel store, no waste of money, and no missing sale chances. So, make all efforts to manage and handle inventory and keep a stress-free sales floor.