Congratulations! Your retail store has made it through the holidays. The beginning of the year is time to rest, reflect and focus on how you’re going to organize your stockroom. Spending time sorting and organizing after a non-stop season of visually setting and resetting, this may be the last thing you want to do.
6 Tips to Organize Your Stockroom
Walk your stockroom with your team and make a map of the stockroom to start. Your sales team can provide feedback on stockroom obstacles faced throughout the year, especially during 4th quarter. Investing time and funds into stockroom fixtures and supplies is sure fire to impact your store’s overall performance and profit.
1. Search the stockroom for any missed or old merchandise that didn’t make it to the floor.
Many of these items can be collected for an end-of-winter clearance sale, donated to charity or used as store promotion giveaways.
2. Search stock room for defective merchandise.
This is an opportunity to review how to handle and process defective merchandise with your team. Print out a clear, step-by-step procedure associates are to follow and process to receive credit from vendor. Designate this area using bins with printed adhesive labels. Try hanging a bulletin board to display your defective merchandise procedure. If space allows, have it next to a work table so associates can easily process the damaged merchandise.
3. Designate a hanging bay area.
This area must be easily accessible. Try making this area easily identifiable by using printed adhesive labels, similar to the defective bins. By having rolling racks readily available, this allow associates to roll out new merchandise and stock the floor. IDD provides several different options to organize your stockroom. For stockroom’s with limited space, check out IDD’s collapsible rolling racks.
4. Have a location for all the non-hanging merchandise.
Additionally, use your adhesive labels to clearly mark where back-stocked items live in your stockroom. This ensures your team can quickly locate the product. Ideally, the fastest moving merchandise’s location should be easily accessible. If your stockroom is larger in size, post a map your associates can use for a quick reference. The last thing you want is the customer waiting while you search for the product.
5. Have too many fixtures on the floor?
Try putting extra gondola shelving units to use in your stockroom. This always provides an option for your team to store your back-stock the same way you display the floor merchandise. By making sure heaviest items are stored on the lowest shelves, this decreases the chance of an injury to you or your associates.
6. Keep the mess out of sight.
Many necessary tasks are faced throughout the year that shouldn’t be completed on the floor. These tasks may create obstacles for your valued customers. Try creating a specific area or sturdy work table designated to sort items, unpack and count inventory. This also helps to keep your product off a dirty floor. Be sure to keep this space clean and tidy by clearing it off after every project.
7. Know where everything is at ALL times using RFID.
If you want to keep up with the times, try using RFID like Levi’s did in this NRF article. Many manufacturers use the tags to track the location of each product they make from the time it’s made until it’s pulled off the shelf and tossed in a shopping cart. Not to mention, the added perks when it comes to loss prevention.
RFID Adhesives
Image source: THINKSTOCK
Lastly, we understand hard work goes into merchandising your store. So much that, keeping a clean and organized stockroom may take a back burner. By implementing some of these tips, hopefully it will be easier for associates to replenish product on the floor and not getting misplaced or damaged. Do you have your own tips we may have missed on keeping your stockroom clean and organized? We would love to hear them in the comments below.