Black Friday – two words that are admired by all the shopaholics around the world. The repair industry is no exception. But with that comes the challenge of stocking inventory.
Inventory management is a continuous battle for repair businesses of all shapes and sizes. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many loopholes in businesses across the globe. We’ve seen everything from unpredictable customer behavior to unreliable inventory supplies.
As Black Friday is fast approaching, it’s more important than ever to know what challenges may arise and devise solutions ahead of time.
Let’s review the seven strategies that can help you optimize your inventory for Black Friday.
Inventory Management Strategies
Let’s review some basic strategies that will help you be on your A-game throughout Black Friday.
1. Learn How To Get A Clear Image Of Your Inventory
Do you know how many purchase orders are currently in line and when they are expected to arrive? How many of your products end up on the sales floor or as safety stock? A secure company requires comprehensive insight into your inventory at all times.
Knowledge of your inventory from the producer to the consumer directly impacts how you manage it. To avoid serious issues such as backorders and out-of-stock items, you must know your real-time inventory levels.
Your cell phone repair POS software can help you keep track of your stock and order levels so that you know when you’re running low on parts. However, manual administration of this procedure might be time-consuming. So, using an automated inventory management system will help you see the whole picture.
2. Get Correct Data Insights
Access to your sales data is one thing, but deciphering and maximizing its value is something else entirely. So reconsider your previous year’s sales and draw conclusions from them before strategizing your marketing plans for Black Friday.
It’s also helpful to know how many items you have at any one moment. But seeing a product’s demand during the holiday season is only one way it can be valuable. A repair shop owner must keep track of changes in demand for a product over time, across channels, and between different stores.
The ability to identify the proper trends or capitalize on time-sensitive chances is the ideal approach to triumph this Christmas season.
3. Use A Multi-Location Warehouse In The Cloud
Repair shops at several locations may help you offer more affordable and faster delivery to clients while also making region-famous things more accessible. When you move inventory items between stores and forget to record them, though, it might be difficult.
That’s where POS Software can assist you!
Manage all of your shops from a single platform. Get essential reports, and understand when you’re out of stock and where you need to order more goods. Thus helping you create a win-win scenario for your cellphone repair store.
4. Save Time by Automating Inventory Management
Repair businesses are still operating in the Stone Age. Some specialize in a single store and use Excel-based inventory management, which is ineffective. Moreover, if they do not scale up or automate quickly while online, it might spell certain doom for them!
It’s also obsolete, time-consuming, and ineffective. But the sheer potential for human mistakes is staggering. Similarly, automation allows staff to track SKUs across all of your shops and keep track of orders, returns, exchanges, and shipments for all of your goods in real-time.
Automation also makes it simple to generate barcodes, invoices, and purchase orders. You’ll be able to standardize inventory management to a significant extent if you name your items and SKUs correctly.
5. Examine Your Sales And Marketing Strategy
Your marketing plan will significantly impact your inventory. So any attempts to have a successful Black Friday should consider any offers you intend to run.
Do you have doorbusters, which attract clients into the shop but do not necessitate a large quantity of inventory? Do you provide and plan to promote a specific product that other local businesses don’t sell, meaning that more consumers will seek your store for it?
6. Build a Stable Relationship with Vendors
Not establishing a positive business relationship with your suppliers is also an issue that many businesses face.
Finding a trustworthy and dependable repair parts supplier will create a careful balance between consistencies and won’t break the bank.
7. Have a substitution plan ready
Even the well-planned projects can go wrong. In certain circumstances, a truly successful marketing plan may quickly lead to a product shortage, especially if you run out of an essential item.
Suppose you sell out of a popular Black Friday item quickly. In that case, you may be forced to consider alternative strategies to keep consumers coming into the shop and, even more significantly, purchasing things from the check-out (or cart page).
For this reason, it may be helpful to devise a plan for shifting focus quickly and efficiently while maintaining current customers.
Preparing For Black Friday
Repair shops must conduct various activities before Black Friday to ensure that they are ready for the rush.
These tasks include:
- Training and educating employees on the deals and fast-changing stock
- To avoid backup lines, schedule the finest crew.
- Ensure that your staff is available to address any emergencies and customer care difficulties as soon as they arise.
- To make things easier for customers, you may relocate merchandise displays and shelves.
- Check the status of your inventory to ensure that all of the discounts have been taken.
Ready, Set, Go!
Inventory will still potentially be an issue for retailers during this period. This is due to supply chain concerns like material scarcity, delayed supplier lead times, and Managing inventory.
However, it will be simpler if you have a dependable repair shop software and a scanning device that allows items to be instantly scanned.
