Chapter 20. Warehousing and Inventory Control

In This Chapter

• How to set up your warehouse

• Rules of inventory control

• How to do just-in-time delivery

• Packaging tips

How many products you carry and how much stocked inventory you need determine how much storage or warehouse space you require. Will you use your house, find an offsite warehouse, or outsource your warehousing needs? Be sure to include the added expenses in your business plan. Your products are not only a space hog, but they involve an extra cost for storage. Inventory control becomes importantand not only for space concerns. Your inventory is your cash, your working capital. If it's all tied up in a slow-moving inventory, it impacts the operation of your entire business.

In the retail world, every square inch of shelf space is accounted for. For a product to stay on the shelves, it has to produce a certain amount of revenue. If not, most likely, it will go on clearance and disappear from the store forever. Unless you have room to spare, you don't want your products to sit idle, especially if you are paying for warehousing space. Move it or lose it! Every day that goes by, each item will cost you more. Why, you ask? Because you're paying to store it.