Vape at First Sight

At first glance inventory control for a Vape Shop seems like any other retail industry. Sure there are a lot of products, you have all the flavors for each brand. And then You have all the strengths for that flavor and then you may have one or 2 sizes. So sure each flavor has 6 to 12 different combinations and you might have 12-25 flavors per brand and 5 or six brands. Then the mods and then the batteries. Oh My.

You've Updated your Relationship status with Vape to: "It's Complicated"

Wait, is that the first glance? The one that just said there possibly hundreds of items types for flavors and then multiple quantities you have to count and reconcile to manage your inventory? Did I mention: these flavors usually don't have barcodes, so you can't just walk by with your scanner and check them in?

How do you even know what to order? Well sure you know because you have you point of sale system. This tracks the Brand-Flavor-Strength-Size combination. Does it really? Have you checked your sales reports? Most systems stop at a certain point of tracking: Maybe the size, not the strength. So you better be sure you know what you are selling. You need to see the whole journey of a product.

What to look for in your POS

Lets group these things into areas you need to identify:

• How you price them, for cost and retail price. How you update hundreds of items prices.
• Are the prices grouped by price groups, categories, brands?
• Do your reports include all features about the item inventory, sale, returns, voids, transfers?
• Are you able to decide on re-ordering of hundreds of items without spending a lot of time, but making the right choice?
• Did you fall victim to Minumums?
• Do you have a Re-Order Strategy?
• Do you have a reconciliation strategy?

Lets make a Date and Reconcile our Differences in Inventory.

And so you think, "Oh I'll have minimum reorder points, once the count hits that, I'll be alerted". When do you want to be alerted? All day long, at the end of the day. What if you are getting emails all day long, that's silly. How about when you log into your system, that sounds better right? So you think you can stick with Minimums - When something is low your system tells you to re-order it. How did you figure this out for hundreds of items? What if it took 6 months to sell 1 of your 3 MG 15 ML Cotton Candy? But 2 days to sell out of all of the 3 MG 15 ML Vanilla. Is it that Cotton Candy isn't popular, or that strength or that size? Are you going to wait to update this? Will your system automatically figure out the weather too, so you know when you won't be busy?. Many factors determine a minimum. The span of time for re-ordering, the time it takes to receive new product after each re-order. Even the weather are included in the things that need to be considered. Minumum is a first glance idea, which sounds like a good one, but it's not.

How do you believe your 'minimum' is going to help you? It can't analyze, it can only be the trigger. So unless you have an algorithm, you need to be able to review your system and find out the real requirements for a re-order.

So it's more important to come in with a clear understanding of the relationship you want to have, and what you will need to make it successful.

Here at CCS, we have worked with Vape shops, and offered them our 'Relationship' consultations to make sure our customers have a very good understanding of their partner, the ECig's they enjoy daily.

Nothing can demonstrate this better than our ECig Video which demonstrates much of what we have discussed here.