Craig Powell is Managing Director at Balloon One, who create end to end systems for warehouses and other areas along the supply chain. In this article, he explains how you can ensure your storage facility will cope with extra demand during busy seasonal and sale periods.
From ‘Back to School’ to ‘Black Friday’, seasonal retail promotions are the perfect way to secure high volumes of sales and bring in lots of new custom. However, as demand can dramatically increase during these busy periods, it’s very hard to deliver a flawless service for your customers without anticipating a lot of logistical issues and putting in the effort to resolve them.
Below, Craig takes you through some of the ways you can make sure your warehouse and staff are prepared for seasonal surges.
Organise your stock
A major part of your preparations for seasonal promotions should include reviewing your stock levels. Of course, you want to have enough extra to meet customer demand, but going too far the other way and overordering can lead to lost revenue and deadstock. So, you’ll have to schedule them accurately and realistically. One of the ways you can achieve this is to actively monitor sales and study your sales data from previous years, then use that information to forecast stock demands. You can also use this data to work out what your areas of focus and special offers should be.
Make space in your warehouse
If you can anticipate the scale of the impact seasonal promotions will have through your sales data, as well as working out how much extra stock you’ll have to order, you can effectively organise your warehouse to cope with the demand. Clear out your deadstock and out of season inventory with mid-season sales and clearance events, making room on the shelves for products that are in the promotion and more likely to sell.
Improve the efficiency of your warehouse
Customers want their products to arrive just as promptly as any other time of year and it can damage your reputation if you fail to deliver. So, take the time to introduce time-saving measures, such as reducing picking and packing times by moving seasonal stock to the ground floor, or by putting your most popular products together near loading areas to move them quickly.
Focus on staffing and communication
Many warehouses choose to increase their workforce by hiring seasonal staff to assist with picking and packing and to take on the more frequent deliveries. However, it can be difficult to forecast the correct amount of extra staff to take on, and too many or too few can cost your business money.
Temporary workers can come with their own set of problems too, such as low rates of productivity and the increased likelihood of staff theft. Counter this by offering training, incentives, and effective communication for and amongst all staff, all of which contribute to a positive working environment.
Install or update your technology
These are just some of the ways you can make sure your warehouse is able to cope with additional demand during busy seasonal promotions.
Companies that successfully cope with seasonal promotions usually use intuitive software to cope with sales promotion events. This tech can be used to monitor, review, and even come up with solutions to logistics issues. So, ahead of your busiest periods, investigate whether you need to increase the functionality of the systems and programs that you have in your warehouse.
These are just some of the ways you can make sure your warehouse is able to cope with additional demand during busy seasonal promotions.
Credit: Craig Powell, Managing Director at Balloon One,
Holly brings a wealth of experience in both print and digital publishing. As Modern Retail’s Content Editor, Holly is passionate about helping independent retailers to thrive in today’s ever-changing market.
