If you walked into a store for the first time and you saw unorganized shelves of merchandise, maybe even boxes of stuff cluttering the aisles, what would be your first impression?

Perhaps you’d think, “Wow, this place has so much stuff. Sales must not be so great.” Or, “Wow, this place is a mess. Store management must not care about what they sell.”

Whatever that first impression may be, a disorganized store screams “poor inventory control.” That is not a good message to give customers, and it’s never good for a retailer’s bottom line. 

If that storeowner cares about staying in business, the issue of inventory control must be addressed. The problem in this scenario could simply be not having a clear picture of how much of certain items to have in stock based on supply and demand. Or it could be that the manager and staff haven’t a clue about how to organize what they’ve got.

The best solution would be to hire an inventory management service like Blue Chip to straighten things out. And then continue to rely on that professional inventory management team to keep things organized and on track. 

For example, Blue Chip can do periodic audits that would include inventory reports ranging from retail and gross margin reports to SKU and price verification reports. Having tight data control like this will help a disorganized retailer identify best-selling merchandise from slow movers, thereby avoiding overstocking on items, or not having enough in store, as well as helping staff better organize stock so they will always know where to find specific items.

For a retailer like our fictitious storeowner, it’s important to hire the best to get inventory under control. After all, first impressions do count.