Being a small business owner is a rollercoaster ride, and one of the most nerve-wracking parts of it is definitely stocking inventory. You’d think that ordering a few boxes of goods would be the easy part of running a business, but oh boy, it’s probably the worst.
At first, it seems like a no-brainer: buy what you think you’ll sell, store it, and wait for customers to to buy it. But the reality is much more complicated. There’s the constant guessing game of how much stock you’ll need and when you’ll need it. Order too much, and you’re stuck with unsold items that eat into your profits. Order too little, and you risk disappointing customers and losing sales. It’s a balancing act that can sometimes feel like you're walking a tightrope especially when suppliers have minimum orders. These items come by the '1 lot minimum' which in this case means one box. But one box is 150 pieces - of a single item!
One of the biggest challenges is knowing your customer demand. It's easy to assume that because a product is popular this month, it’ll continue to fly off the shelves for months to come. But trends change fast, and staying ahead of what your customers want isn’t always easy. Plus, with supply chains being what they are these days, you can never be 100% sure when you’ll actually get the inventory you've ordered. I can’t tell you how many times I've had to scramble to find last-minute replacements or deal with unexpected delays. Some of these boxes are pretty late, those are Aggretsuko, Demon Slayer, Harry Potter, and Attack on Titan. The Attack on Titan items were ordered November 23, last time the show got a special. I forgot about them until they recently showed up. That doesn't say great things about my inventory management.
Then there's the storage issue. Running a small business means you’re probably not working with a huge warehouse, so space is limited. Trying to fit a mountain of boxes into a small backroom or the corner of your office can feel like a game of Tetris. My every closet has boxes, my bedroom has boxes, my living room has boxes. Too much inventory can clog up your workspace, and not enough means you're constantly running low on stock and stressing over whether you'll run out before your next order arrives.
Of course, managing cash flow is another beast entirely. Investing in inventory ties up a lot of money. You have to buy enough to avoid stockouts but not so much that you’re holding onto deadstock for too long. It's all about striking the right balance—and sometimes, you just have to guess and hope for the best. It doesn't always pan out, I've had some Hello Kitty items for years which led to me not buying anything of Hello Kitty herself ever again.
And let’s not even get started on the thrill of dealing with returns and damaged goods. It starts right when I get the delivery. First all 100+ items must be individually inspected. This was a particularly bad batch of Pokemon binders. Broken packages, gashes and smashed items galore. But to return it there has to be a certain fail rate. Usually there needs to be a 10% fail rate before they'll issue any kind of refund or insurance. You could push it and demand the refund but risk your supplier dropping you. Though this Pokemon box was a bust, the totally order didn't meet the fail rate so I ended up eating this. Then if shipping orders you can send the most pristine items you received and pack it to very best of your abilities. I'm friends with a Mail Man, he'll tell you there's nothing you can do, those boxes get abused at every stop it makes. Even though I do my best to inspect everything before it’s stocked, sometimes things break or arrive in less-than-perfect condition. That means either trying to fix it or issuing a refund. Either way, it’s a headache.
But despite all of these challenges, there’s something incredibly satisfying about getting it right. When you see that your customers are happy with what you have in stock and your shelves are just the right amount of full, it’s like a little win. It makes all the headaches and the hours spent managing inventory worth it. The struggle might be real, but it’s all part of the journey of being a small business owner. In the end if it fails, you know you did your best but if you make it there's something really calming about it. I once had a desk job, and I can never go back.
At the end of the day, it’s about learning from the mistakes, tweaking the process, and trying to get better with each order. Here's to hoping that the next inventory shipment goes a little smoother than this one!
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