Clothing Inventory: What Is & How To Manage

Published

Tue Mar 23 2021

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Clothing inventory management is very important when it comes to running a successful boutique business.

Fashion retail is a fantastic and rewarding industry. It can also be a difficult industry to succeed in. Succeeding as a clothing retailer involves concentrating on the bottom line and identifying methods to improve efficiency.

Inventory management is one of the simplest ways to boost your retail fashion business. If you're not tracking your inventory and supply chain, you're probably wasting money and missing out on chances.

In this guide, we'll look at how to effectively manage inventory in your retail fashion business. More earnings and happy consumers will result as a result of this.

How to Manage Clothing Inventory

When it comes to understanding how to manage inventory, there are a few key places to start. To begin, it helps to understand what clothing inventory actually is and how to properly organize and stock clothing.

Clothing Inventory: A Definition

The term “inventory” refers to both the raw materials utilized in production and the finished items that are ready to sell in a business. Inventory is one of a clothing business’s most important assets since inventory turnover is one of the key sources of revenue production and, as a result, profitability for the business’s shareholders. Raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished items are the three forms of inventory. On a company's balance sheet, it's classified as a current asset. Any business's inventory would be considered a valuable asset. 

Clothing inventory is basically just finished item inventory, including the best products that are ready to be directly sold to the public.

When it comes to clothing inventory, inventory management is vital. Stock is scattered across many warehouses, storefronts, and internet outlets in complicated retail setups. However, shops must avoid having empty shelves owing to a lack of inventory. They must also prevent congested back rooms caused by excess inventory.

In order to improve your sell-through rate and prevent waste, inventory allocation necessitates calculating the appropriate service levels per location and balancing inventories. You must compute the ideal volume of inventory to push to each outlet by taking into account local client demand at each location.

Clothing inventory management and organization can significantly reduce issues associated with these common clothing industry problems.

How to Organize a Clothing Inventory

To start, understand how to buy wholesale clothing to build your inventory. Some jurisdictions require you to have a wholesale license, while others don’t. We recommend doing some research about these laws for your specific area. From there, you’ll need to find a supplier or apparel warehouse that sells products that are aligned with your inventory budget. Once you’ve purchased and received your items, you now have your starting clothing inventory.

Let's begin with storage. Because vertical storage saves space, it makes sense. You can also discover products much more quickly since instead of walking along lengthy rows of boxes on the floor, you can just scan up and down to find the proper container or tote. Open shelves, boxed storage, and transparent plastic containers are all good options.

Another crucial aspect is tracking. Effective tracking systems help you avoid losing or misplacing inventory, and they may also help you make better sourcing selections by alerting you when it's time to replace a specific category or brand. To keep track of inventory, many small firms rely on basic spreadsheets on computers. It all relies on the size of your company and the amount of inventory you have.

Clothing Inventory Management

For three reasons, good fashion inventory management is critical. To begin with, it reduces stock outs and boosts customer satisfaction. Clothing inventory management reduces carrying costs and avoids businesses from squandering resources on items like storage and insurance. It's also advantageous since, especially in the fashion business, investors are increasingly looking at a company's inventory to determine its health.

The following tips and tricks are helpful when it comes to clothing store inventory management:

  • In terms of labeling, think like a warehouse. Label by item kind, alphabetically, numerically, or numerically.

  • Storage facilities provide a flexible, adaptable inventory space for many small and medium garment firms.

  • Keep an eye out for evidence that your storage space is clean and well-kept. You can search for symptoms of rodent infestations and inquire about the facility's pest management approach.

  • An ERP system can help you prevent missing sales due to inventory shortages. These solutions let you order your most in-demand goods when stock levels hit a certain level by measuring the amount of each item you have on hand in real-time.

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