Operating your own warehouse as a part of your overall retail endeavours is a great way of cutting out the middle man and remaining in full control of your stock. Being able to manage your products, packing, and deliveries, both to the shop floor and to customers themselves, can save you a lot of money by not having to pay for a premium warehouse service.
While this can save you money overall, you may still find that there are some high costs, raising your overheads unnecessarily. These methods can help to reduce those warehouse overheads and allow you to divert those savings elsewhere in your business.
Improve Your Inventory Visibility
The more items you’re storing in your warehouse, the harder it becomes to keep track of everything. Combine this with the constant transfer of stock to and from your shop, and it’s easy to see how things disappear, and stock numbers begin to show discrepancies. By increasing your inventory visibility, you’ll be able to improve your stock management’s efficiency and accuracy, allow for more accurate forecasting, and ultimately will not over or underspend when restocking your warehouse.
This optimisation can lead to lower costs overall and can be done using Enterprise resource planning software or ERP. This allows for greater integration between every aspect of your business and adds clarity to your inventory management process.
Optimise Your Storage
The processes throughout your warehouse can get complicated as your operations expand. The more stock you add to the warehouse, especially when the variety increases, the more complicated it’s going to be for your team to pick and pack items efficiently.
You need to strongly consider the layout of your warehouse, putting the most commonly needed items in the most accessible locations, but you also need to ensure that you have a system in place should changing consumer trends alter the desires of your customers. Remember that time is money, and one of the best ways to reduce those overheads is to improve your efficiency as much as possible.
Buy Second-Hand Equipment
Actively searching for ways to save money is always an important task when running a business. You can do certain things to cut those expenses significantly for your warehouse. For example, the purchase of second-hand equipment for your team is a great way to do this. You can find a wide range of refurbished equipment, such as used forklifts when searching for better deals for your warehouse. You can even find cheaper storage units and furniture like shelves by buying second-hand. Not only is this cutting your costs, but it’s also a much for eco-friendly choice too.
Increase Security
A common cause of profit loss in the retail sector today is actually down to theft. Whether that’s items going missing from warehouses, or things being taken by customers on the shop floor, most businesses accept that this is not entirely avoidable and include this loss margin in their overall budgets.
However, there are ways to reduce this loss, and they are especially worthwhile, even if it’s just to protect your more valuable items. Employee theft is unfortunately hard to detect, yet it does happen. Finding ways to deal with theft in your business is essential in cutting the costs of having to restock more often. It’s important to strive to breed a culture where everyone understands that this won’t be tolerated.
