Sunday, September 11, 2011

4 Tips for Organizing Your s Inventory

Do you have okay inventory sitting around the house? Maybe youare new to okay and just have a few items on hand that you arewaiting to sell. Or, maybe you have turned selling your okay inventory into a part-time or full-time ingee-generating career!Whatever your case may be, you are more likely to make more moneyif you keep your okay inventory organized. So before heading out to garage sales, auction sales, and secondhand stores searching for those unique products, make sure you have a plan in place fororganizing.
Depending on the amount of you okay inventory you currently haveto sellor plan on sellingwill determine how much space you need. For the purposes of this article, we will assume that youplan on running this business at a rate where you can manage theinventory from your home. However, many of these same techniquescan be used if you decide to upgrade to a small warehouse.
If you are new to selling on okay, it is easy to get caught up inthe excitement of the worlds largest e-gemerce site and want tosell everything. However, I encourage you to start selling at a low number. This will help you begee familiar with how the auction process works. Your goal is not only to sell items for profit, but to develop a good feedback rating. This rating is based on product quality and customer service, so the better service you can provide the higher rating you will receive which is key for building a good reputation.
4 steps to organizing your okay inventory:
1.Dedicate a spare room, basement, or garage to organize and manage your okay inventory.
Ideally, you will clear out this space before you bring your newfound treasures home. Within this room, keep a filing cabinetwith plenty of files and folders with tabs. You will create a newfile for each product you sell. By keeping your inventory in one confined area, you can keep better track of your inventory and reduce the chance of items getting misplaced or broken.
2.Categorize your merchandise.
Think of your okay room as your store. You know how convenientit is to walk into your local grocery store? You know just whereto go for the milk, bread, and cheese. This is because items arelaid out in a fashion that makes sense. Literally, set your okayroom as a store. Set up tables or shelves where you can display the products in a nice and organized manner. Seeing these products will help you know what is in your inventory and know where you have empty shelves to fill.
Lets say you specialize in selling perfume, vintage t-shirts, golf clubs, antique teapots, unique dolls, and collector baseballcards. It would make sense to group all of your fragile items (perfume, teapots, and dolls) together. Perhaps keep these itemson a higher shelf or table out of the reach of small children or pets. Then, organize these items within each category. You couldorganize by value, brand, etc.
If vintage t-shirts is a category that you anticipate selling on an ongoing basis, it would be wise to hang these in a closet or hanging rack, or fold nicely so you can easily see the graphics.Again, organize these within its category. You could organize bysize, color, graphics, brand, etc.
The golf clubs are unique because they probably wont sit up on ashelf or table. In this case, simply line them up along a wall inan organized manner.
And last, the baseball cards. You would want to keep these organized in a protective baseball card organizer. You could organize by player, team, year, value, etc. It would be wise tokeep a print out of your card inventory right inside the organizer.
3.Organize merchandise information.
Just as important as the merchandise itself, is organizing the information that supports it. For every product you bring home, create a file. This file should contain product information, photos, and a copy of the description you post on okay.
Items to include in each product file:
Product information - For example, lets say you just found a beautiful unique doll at a garage sale. Create a file where youwill keep all of the information related to that product. If youdont know much about this particular doll, research it. Find outabout her origin, her history, her creator, etc. Keeping all of this information in one file will help you as you go to write yourproduct description.
Product descriptions - When you write your product descriptions,be as visual as possible. Make your products sound exciting to drawthe bidder injust be sure to not over-exaggerate. It is essential to be honest in your descriptions. If you have an interesting storyof how you found the product, include that too.
Product photos - To give your bidders a fair picture of your items,invest in a high-quality digital camera. Take clear pictures at different angles. It might be wise for you to set up a corner inyour okay room for a mini-photo studio. A well-lit corner with a nice backdrop would suffice. Setting up a permanent mini-studio will save you the hassle and time of doing this every time you sell a product.
4.Shipping center.
In your okay room, dont forget to include an area or station for shipping supplies. A variety of padded envelopes, boxes, padding, packaging tape, and mailing labels should all be set up in an organized manner. This station will help you ship your products out quicklywhich is an excellent customer service practice.
With this useful organizing system, you will feel like you have better control over your okay inventoryenabling you to make more money, faster!
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