Just-in-Time Delivery: Saving Money on Storage

If you manage your inventory correctly, you can save money on storage and storage space. Unless you have to purchase products in bulk to get a certain price break, you don't want to carry hundreds or thousands of the same product, only to move a few per month. Not only will your money be tied up in that product, but so will your warehousing space. Although the cost per product might be more, consider the cost of warehousing: The added cost per product could be cheaper than the cost to warehouse the product.

Tip

Instead of going direct to OrderMotion, you can reduce your startup cost and monthly cost by using Solid Cactus Complete Commerce (www.solidcactus.com), powered by OrderMotion. Complete Commerce is also fully customized for use with the Yahoo! store. For more information, visit www.myecommercesuccess.com.

See if your supplier will be willing to drop-ship the products direct to the customer. Drop-shipping saves warehousing space and up-front inventory cost. If you decide to have items drop-shipped, consider using a more advanced backend system, such as OrderMotion (www.ordermotion.com), which automatically sends fulfillment notifications direct to the drop shipper.

Warning

If you are both drop-shipping and shipping your own products, consider the extra shipping cost. If a customer orders a product that needs to be shipped by you and another product that needs to be shipped by the drop-shipper, you will need to ship two packages.