It might be hard to fill the shelves for the holiday rush. Even though you should have adequate inventory to satisfy your customers’ demands, you can end up with extra stock after the holidays. You may encounter surplus inventory at various points during the year. By actively managing your inventory, you may accurately predict how much cash flow your store will have on hand and the decisions you need to make going forward. What tactics can you think of to make surplus profitable?

What is surplus inventory?

Unsold inventory for a longer time than usual is excess inventory. Overstock or deadstock are other names for these kinds of products. Inventory can be considered surplus or overstocked if it is on hand for weeks, months, or even years without being utilized or sold, depending on the products.

Techniques for managing surplus inventories

Your store could have too much inventory on hand for a variety of reasons. Demand varies depending on the market condition or the economy. This inventory may not only eat up valuable shelf and warehouse space, but it may also affect your revenue. Here are a few typical methods business owners could employ to reduce surplus inventory:

Combining product sales

Bundling products can boost sales. For instance, if you sell smartphones, and have an excess inventory of their cases, offer a free case with each phone purchase. You can also sell low-selling items with hot-selling items by offering special discounts on combined or bundle purchases.

Discounting

Offering discounts might encourage skeptics to test your items. It could be a chance to move inventory that might otherwise be sitting on your shelf and give your customers a break on products they might not have known they needed or couldn’t afford. Discounts can be provided regularly or at periods when a particular inventory, such as used items, is more likely to remain on your shelves.

CellSmart POS has a built-in discount management feature that helps you add discounts directly from within the POS software for bundled purchases.

Remarket products

Perhaps your inventories haven’t sold well because they never met the eye of their target audience. To better explain your products and services to your potential customers, upgrade your keywords, product titles, and descriptions on online listings and add good images. You should also add all the features of products in ads so that your potential customers find your ad. Items in your inventory may have additional applications or usages that prospective buyers are looking for, but since you didn’t mention them, they never found your ad.

Online marketing is an excellent method to market your products.

Offer Layaway

Buy now, pay later may be a suitable alternative for customers afraid to make a sizable purchase or actively managing their budget to divide payment into many repayments. Layaway might help you make sales to them. One in six Americans wants to take advantage of the purchase now, pay later service, according to a new Afterpay Festive Forecast research. 

With the CellSmart POS Layaway feature, you can easily manage all the payments effortlessly. 

Consider selling online

You may contact customers online in a variety of methods, from a dedicated website for your business to marketplaces like Facebook, OfferUp, eBay, or Amazon. By addressing a large audience who might be unfamiliar with your shop or not local to your area, a more omnichannel strategy to sell leftover inventory could boost your sales.