THE BENEFITS OF AN ORGANISED STORE ROOM

By Amanda Elliss

There is nothing worse than hearing, when cleaning out your storeroom or doing a stock take, “Look what I found….people were asking for this all season”.

Somehow, the item was buried with other stock, under a pile of backpacks or behind some flattened cardboard boxes. For all the good intentions of organising the storeroom, the place was a mess, and that’s when you lose sales.

“After spending five minutes digging through a few unmarked boxes they can’t find the item. The frustrated customer leaves empty handed and the sale has been lost.”

Restocking the floor is one of the basics of retailing. You receive the stock, put out a size range and then the rest goes into a box to be re-stocked as it is sold. Problem is, if storeroom is not organized, then the box with the rest of the stock isn’t easy to find. We’ve all experienced it – a staff member heads out the back to find the size 10 the customer wants, but after spending five minutes digging through a few unmarked boxes they can’t find the item. The frustrated customer leaves empty handed and the sale has been lost.

Having an organised storeroom ensures all your stock is easily accessed for re-stocking styles and sizes. It also ensures that styles aren’t hidden and forgotten, so the stock that needs a top up is obvious and stock levels are easily checked against your POS system.

Again it means you won’t find pieces of a popular style buried under everything else at the end of its season that then has to go straight onto the sale rack. All because of an unorganised storeroom that stock has now lost a lot of value when only a few months earlier it was dollars in the bank.

It is basic, but here are a few ways to keep your storeroom organised:

-Hang in styles.
-Use clear plastic boxes, clearly labeled and placed together i.e. all gloves together.
-Stack footwear boxes in styles and in size order so when in a rush sizes aren’t missed when serving a customer.
-Get rid of the clutter. Do a tip run twice a year with old POP etc. so everything in the storeroom is always current.
-Keep the store room organised – always a good job on those quiet days
-Make sure all staff knows exactly where everything is.
-Re-stock frequently so you are aware of what is in your storeroom. Cross check stock levels on your POS with that in the storeroom – another good job on quieter days.
-Build or buy cheap shelves and racking in the storeroom– it doesn’t need to look good, it just has to work.

Sometimes the simple things are easy to over look, but they can make a difference. Having a messy, unorganised storeroom can lead to lost sales and that is the last thing we want.

* Amanda Elliss is a retailer with 14 years experience and owns the Rip Curl mountain stores in Jindabyne and Thredbo.