Take an Inventory of Your Inventory Lists
I still remember the first time I set foot in a retailer’s commercial warehouse. I was stunned by the sheer square footage, the rows and rows of merchandise — all of it carefully organized and sorted to make it easy for the employees to locate products their customers wanted.
Even if you don’t have a physical facility, it’s still important to organize your inventory, especially when you have access to a large assortment of drop-ship inventory. With that in mind, today I’ll be outlining some creative ways to use Doba’s inventory lists to manage your virtual warehouse of drop-shipping products.
Understanding Inventory Lists
Think of an inventory list as being like a big bulletin board to which you can pin different products. Whenever you come across a product in Doba’s enormous catalog of nearly 1.75 million SKUs that you think is potentially profitable or noteworthy, you can click the “Add to My Inventory” button and save it to one of your inventory lists. Rather than reading about how it works, it’s probably easier to just watch the My Inventory Tutorial.
Seasonal Inventory Lists
As we’ve often covered here on the Doba blog, seasonal items can be a gold mine for drop ship retailers. The challenge with seasonal merchandise is that, by definition, it changes quickly, and rotating your inventory can be a time-consuming process if you do it manually. It also seems like I often come across good seasonal items when they’re out of season and I end up hustling to find them again later when people are actually interested in buying them. This is where your inventory lists are going to save the day!
Set up an inventory list for each season of the year. Or better yet, set up an inventory list for each month of the year. For example, “January Products,” “December Products,” etc. Now, whenever you browse through the Doba catalog and see seasonal merchandise during the year, you can just save it to the appropriate inventory list and move on.
Here’s an example: Say it’s late-January and while browsing for last-minute Valentine’s Day merchandise, you spot something that would also make a great Mother’s Day gift. Rather than trying to remember it for later, just save it to your “May Products” list (and maybe April too). When spring rolls around, load up that list and you’ve got that product (along with any others you’ve found) ready to push right over to eBay in minutes.
Product Prep Lists
There’s a lot more to being successful than randomly selecting products, tossing them up on eBay, and hoping they sell. Smart retailers use multiple inventory lists to break down their merchandising into a process. For example, I have the following inventory lists set up:
- Research
- Revise
- Ready to Sell
As you browse through the catalog, it’s pretty common to stumble across an interesting product that might be worth selling, but maybe you don’t have the time to research it that very second. No problemo. Just save it to your “Research” list. Later, when you have more time, open up that list and check out the products you’ve set aside to research.
If something looks promising but needs some changes before you’re ready to sell it — for instance, a zippier description or keywords in the title — then move it over to your “Revise” prep list.
One of the best things about inventory lists is that you can rewrite the name, description, pricing, etc., for any product in your inventory. The “Revise” list is where you put products that have potential, but need some TLC before they’re ready for prime time. As you go through and edit the products to your satisfaction, you move them to “Ready to Sell.” These products are prepped, polished, and good to go.
The bottom line is that inventory lists are a critical tool in your toolbox, keeping you current, creative and clean. And using these lists can have a huge impact on your level of success.
