Best Practices For Pet Supply Store Inventory Management
Optimizing your inventory will optimize your profits. But this will require you to find the right inventory balance without compromising customer satisfaction and experience. Look at your target market – pet owners come to your store because they love their pets. And as per statistics, pet owners will spend luxuriously on their pets, regardless of the economic downturn. Therefore, the challenge here is not whether your pet supply store has demand. Instead, it is whether you can meet those demands. So, you have no choice but to implement the best strategies for your pet store inventory management. And your goal is optimization and efficiency with a touch of customer satisfaction.
Choosing Your Inventory
A vital step in inventory management is choosing the proper inventory for your pet store. Remember, one of your biggest goals is to meet your customer's needs. So, first, identify the products your pet owners need the most. Some of the most profitable pet products include CBD for dogs, dog poop bags, pet litter, pet beds, pet clothes, pet food, personalized accessories like collars, exercise tools, grooming supplies, and seat covers. You can choose between selling various products or niche down when deciding what inventory to sell. For instance, instead of selling all these products, you can choose to focus on pet foods or grooming suppliers. Since pet products have high demand, the options you choose are bound to make a profit. Nonetheless, they must be high quality, especially for sensitive products like pet food. This requires you to find suitable suppliers.
Choosing Your Supplier
Supplier sourcing and management are also a significant part of inventory management. Think about it: the relationship you build with your suppliers affects the quality of products you sell and your capacity to meet customer demand. This means you need reliable and excellent suppliers to source the best products and deliver products to your store on demand. For example, choosing a supplier for pet food products requires one with very high-quality products. Therefore, the suppliers should be well versed with the shelf-life implications of certain products. That is, they should always provide products not close to their expiry date to ensure your customers get fresh and healthy produce. One other thing to consider when building your supplier relationships is their willingness to work with you to grow your sales revenue continuously. For example, customer behavior and beliefs keep changing fast. Therefore, where pet owners are willing to splurge on pet supplements in one season, they might opt for organic food options for their pets in another. This means you must continuously remain aware of the changing demands of your customers. A supplier that understands this need and works with you to ensure only the best and necessary inventory is moving through the supply chain throughout the year is your ultimate partner. Therefore, consider supplier values and their intent to grow with your customer demand before choosing your supplier.
Take Advantage Of Technology
So, you have your inventory, your suppliers, and you've opened your store. Now you need to find the best ways to manage your inventory. This is where technology comes in.
First, technology gives you automation capabilities
This enhances the efficiency of your inventory management. Picture this: it is the beginning of August, and you just received your first inventory, which includes 100 pet food products. With an end-to-end POS system, logging each item in your business database and inventory records takes a few hours. Why? Your supplier will send a digital record of all the products supplied for your inventory. Once they reach your store, a stocktaking app counterchecks these products fast to ensure the digital records match the physical products at your store. As such, you effectively identify issues like stock shrinkage and take immediate actions like asking for a replacement for damaged products. The POS system automatically updates your inventory records, eliminating the tedious manual data entry processes.
Second, technology helps you to forecast for the future
Simultaneously, the POS system updates any sales happening in your store. This means that at any given time, you can accurately identify the exact number of products on your shelves, in your warehouse, and the number of sold items. An analysis of your product information in alignment with the fast-moving products based on your sales records can tell you what customers prefer. Over time, you can use this data to identify future products that garner more profit. But first, ensure that each product in your inventory records has a product description based on things like quantity and ingredient list.
Third, technology improves your decision-making power
A robust POS system will help you monitor your inventory and collect essential product data to inspire business decisions that enhance your sales. For example, identifying the products with low turnovers enables you to decide whether to eliminate them entirely from your supply list or to stock them in low quantities.
Forth, technology keeps you agile
Agility in business is no longer a choice. Instead, keeping your pet supply store in per with the changing landscapes of the digital era is necessary. And while adopting technology helps you keep up with the times,technology is also changing faster. Therefore, you must be agile to ensure that your operations adapt and deliver quickly to the changing environments. The right technology solution will continuously update your operations and capabilities, collect market data and trends to keep you informed and support your agile business culture. For example, our Erply POS system has integration capabilities with online stores like Shopify that easily allow you to take your pet supply store online. This meets the growing demand for online shopping.
Lastly, technology ensures your inventory management operations are efficient
One advantage of using technology is having access to data that can enhance your overall pet store supply store operations. But only if you know how to use the information correctly. For example, a dip in sales for a particular product is easily recognized with data. Sharing the data with your suppliers can help them find solutions, like developing a new and more efficient product line. Data, like the product information list, can help you manage products on your shelf by following the first in, first out rule. That is, you can create a transparent system in your warehouse so that your employees easily identify the products that need to be pulled from the warehouse and into the store and shelves first. A digital identification system also quickly flags products that are nearing the expiration date. Hence, you can make intelligent decisions by moving those products into your store faster or creating and offering promotions on these products to ensure they sell quickly. This gives your customers something to smile about while protecting you from stock shrinkage or waste.
Erply Can Help
Erply is a POS software solution that caters to your inventory management needs. For instance, you can create custom labels to help you keep track of your inventory, making it easier to adopt the first in, first out management method. Custom labels also make it easier to identify new products in your warehouse to protect them from expiration. Erply also has stocktaking and reporting tools that automate your inventory management processes. For instance, the stocktaking app helps you record all your stock faster. You will also remain agile with Erply eCommerce integration features that allow you to take your business online with a few simple clicks. Get a demo from Erply to see how your pet store benefits from our capabilities.