This is post No.2 in the blog post series of Limited Supply Webinar on Cash is King - Cash Flow Boosting Tips for D2C brands.
Get rest of the insights, takeaways and strategies from webinar that can help business owners and supply chain managers to navigate but also thrive in complex world of inventory management apps.
1. Pre-sale strategies to manage stockouts
Effectiveness of pre-sale strategies as a proactive approach to managing stockout can be particularly disruptive to both revenue and customer satisfaction.
Here is how businesses can implement these strategies to maintain sales momentum and manage customer expectations:
- Transparent Communication: Initiating a pre-sale allows businesses to continue selling products even when they are out of stock by clearly communicating the future availability. Transparency is crucial.
We recommend informing customers about the expected wait times and the reasons for delays. This open communication builds trust and can even enhance customer loyalty, as buyers appreciate the honesty and are more willing to wait.
- Create Urgency and Exclusivity:
Offering products on pre-sale can create a sense of urgency and exclusivity, encouraging customers to purchase before the items officially come back in stock.
This tactic not only secures sales in advance but also generates excitement and anticipation for the product release.
- Incentivize Pre-orders: To make pre-sales more attractive, we suggest providing incentives such as discounts, free shipping, or exclusive bonuses for customers who place orders during the pre-sale period.
These incentives can significantly increase the conversion rate of pre-orders.
One of the Slack channel members, Srdjan Popovic, asked this question- Does anyone have a good pre-order solution for when variants go out of stock?
Youri discussed this question during the webinar at 19:35 highlighting Haven Athletic's approach to pre-sale strategy:
1. Test demand before launch: Haven Athletic creates product pages with images and descriptions for potential products to gauge interest before manufacturing. This method allows them to assess demand and make informed production decisions.
2. Managing pre-sale orders: Haven Athletic implemented email automation to keep customers informed about pre-sale orders, including expected shipping times.
3. Engaging customers duraing wait times: By maintaining communication throughout pre-sale period, Haven Athletic keeps customers engaged and informed, enhancing satisfaction despite longer wait times.
2. Financial Metrics and Inventory Levels
We underscore significance of carefully monitoring and managing financial metrics related to inventory, as these play a critical role in maintaining a healthy cash flow and ensuring operational efficiency.
Here are some strategies to effectively manage these metrics:
- Inventory to Revenue Ratio: This ratio is essential for understanding how much of your business's working capital is tied up in inventory versus how much it's generating in revenue.
Youri shares that businesses should aim to optimize this ratio by keeping inventory levels closely aligned with expected sales, thereby minimizing excess stock and avoiding stockouts.
- Cost Considerations: It's crucial to consider both the direct and indirect costs associated with maintaining inventory levels. Direct costs include purchase price of the goods, while indirect costs involve storage, insurance, and potential obsolescence.
- Lead Time and Safety Stock:
Understanding supplier lead times and maintaining appropriate levels of safety stock are vital to prevent stockouts.
Businesses must start analyzing historical data to predict future inventory needs accurately and set safety stock levels that buffer against supply chain variability.
- Regular Review and Adjustment: Inventory levels should not be set in stone. Compare actual sales against forecasts, and adjusting inventory levels accordingly.
- Use of Predictive Analytics: Leveraging predictive analytics can enhance inventory management by forecasting future demand more accurately based on historical sales data, market trends, and seasonal fluctuations.
By maintaining a keen awareness of these financial metrics and effectively managing inventory levels, businesses can enhance their operational efficiency and optimize their cash flow.
Youri's insights provide a roadmap for businesses to not only react to current market conditions but also proactively plan for future inventory needs.
3. Optimizing Financial Metrics and Inventory Levels
Managing financial metrics and inventory effectively is crucial for maintaining a healthy balance between cash flow and stock availability.
We emphasize several key aspects of this balance for the Limited Supply Slack D2C Community:
- Margin Analysis: It’s important to regularly analyze the profit margins associated with different inventory items. This helps in identifying which products provide the best return on investment and should be prioritised in stock levels.
Use detailed analytics to track product performance and adjust inventory purchases based on profitability rather than just sales volume.
- Inventory Turnover Ratio:
This metric is vital for assessing how quickly inventory is sold and replaced over a period. A higher turnover rate typically indicates efficient inventory management, as it suggests that products are selling quickly and not sitting on shelves.
Set targets for inventory turnover and closely monitoring this ratio to ensure inventory levels are optimized to meet customer demand without leading to overstock. In this post, you can easily learn how to calculate inventory turnover.
- Cash-to-Cash Cycle Time:
Understand the duration between outlaying cash for inventory and receiving cash from sales can help businesses manage their cash flow more effectively.
Youri points out that reducing this cycle time can significantly enhance liquidity, allowing businesses to reinvest in other areas more quickly.
Strategies such as negotiating better payment terms with suppliers or offering discounts for early payment from customers can effectively shorten this cycle.
- Demand Forecasting Accuracy: Accurate demand forecasting is critical to maintaining optimal inventory levels.
Learn the importance of leveraging historical sales data, market trends, and even customer feedback to predict future sales accurately.
Technologies that incorporate AI and machine learning can significantly enhance forecasting accuracy, allowing businesses to adjust their inventory levels proactively.
- Safety Stock Calculation:
Learn importance of calculating safety stock accurately to avoid potential stockouts during unexpected fluctuations in demand or supply chain disruptions.
Use statistical models that consider both the variability of demand and the reliability of supply to determine the appropriate level of safety stock.
By focusing on these areas, businesses can not only ensure they have the right amount of inventory but also improve their financial stability and responsiveness to market changes. These insights from webinar highlight the need for a strategic approach to inventory management that aligns closely with financial health and business goals in 2025.
Become a part of the Limited Supply Slack Channel to stay informed about future webinars and inventory management techniques. This was part no.2 of the blog on Limited Supply webinar. Click on the link in case you haven't checked part no.1.
Hope you enjoyed the webinar and learned something from these takeaways!
