A lot of Retailers today focus on new, factory-fresh product. After all, this is what customers want, right
Certainly in many circumstances customers do. Perhaps not surprisingly though, many shoppers are looking for the best value possible. Market demand for lowest cost, or gently-used product in exchange for a hefty discount vs MSRP is larger than many might realize. This type of product is known in the industry as bulkstock.
When sourcing product via bulkstock arrangements, retailers often find they are able to pay mere pennies-on-the-dollar for product which they can turn around and sell for significantly higher than keystone. This can be the equation for a highly successful retail business, but it often comes with a downside. Bulkstock sourced product will often arrive in a state of disarray; disorganized, mismatched, damaged, missing UPC, missing MPN, no discernable brand or model information, and so on, but these problems are surmountable. Even the damaged products can be sold for a significant markup.
Retailers can achieve huge profit margins with bulkstock product, but only if they can minimize staffing costs per unit volume, and reduce cycle time by optimizing process flows. Mediocre operational processes not only create high cycle times, but they can also dramatically increase the headcount required for the same throughput.
Bulkstock product, can come in many forms: unsold, floor-model, and overstock inventory; returns, factory seconds, quality control rejects; lightly used, and even damaged product. This product sourcing strategy presents a unique set of operational challenges, including: identifying a restock SKU vs a first-seen product, physically preparing a unit of inventory for sale, and managing low-stock inventory levels throughout sales channels. Each added step increases cycle time and increases the chance of data entry error, or improper product reconditioning and ultimately customer experience.
We’ve found that the most successful bulkstock retailers address the challenges inherent in this business model by seeking out and implementing better operational processes and leveraging tools to drive success. These businesses experience greater profit margins and more scalable operations which allow them to drive faster growth.
Here are three tools available in RetailOps that help reduce errors and time involved in getting bulkstock inventory to your sales-channels and in your customers hands:
Import and leverage vendor manifest data
Quickly make all information provided by the vendor on a bulkstock purchase accessible through the receiving process. Whether it’s as basic as UPC data, or provides more detailed information like MPNs, product names, media URLs and other product information, having this data available directly in the receiving tool at your fingertips is invaluable for a faster, more accurate receiving process.
A powerful and flexible PIM
An effective Product Information Manager (PIM) is the best friend of any bulk stock retailer for both accurate creation of new products in the catalogue, as well as helping quickly identify if a product is new to your catalog or re-stock. As less information is provided in the manifest, the more value the power to quickly link receiving items to existing catalog products becomes. If it’s necessary to create a new SKU for an item being received, attribute dependencies and drag-copy functionality puts the right data in front of receivers for an error free process.
Warehouse barcoding with Chaotic storage
Barcoding enables you to track inventory from the moment it is received, and chaotic inventory, well, here is a good crash course as a place to start. The combination is an extremely efficient warehousing process which is especially valuable for businesses with high SKU counts, low SKU quantities, and large order volumes. The on-the-ground operations are facilitated by our iOS app to accurately move and manage inventory from receiving to shipping.
Bulk stock retailers are presented with a larger value proposition than most retailers for really hammering out great operational processes. These 3 tools can help lay the foundation for operational success even in the most challenging of product types.
Retail operations software should make your life easier. The ultimate retail software provides you the tools to accelerate your business.