It’s the end of a season, and you’ve found yourself with a problem- you have leftover inventory taking up valuable space and jamming up your cash flow!
Excess inventory can pose a difficult dilemma. You need to get rid of obsolete stock quickly while still turning a profit. That’s where a creative sales strategy comes in. Here are five creative ways to clear out your warehouse and renew customers’ interest in older inventory.
1. Mystery Items
Mystery item sales are one of e-commerce’s hottest trends for a good reason. It’s a creative way to move inventory in a way that gets customers excited. Shoppers love mystery items because it’s a low-risk gamble that guarantees a win– a surprise order from their favorite brands!
When posting mystery item sales, tell shoppers what they can expect. Items could be from any given season or style. You can even promise to give them items up to a certain retail value.
Automation makes it simple to deliver on these promises. You can set limits on the price plus the days it’s been in your inventory, and give them something that person has never bought before.
2. Multi-item Sales Posts
Multi-item sales posts help move more items at once rather than selling them individually. The trick is to make these products irresistible by grouping them with complementary items. For instance, if you sell apparel, you can do this to sell a curated look.
Complementary multi-item posts can reframe the way shoppers look at specific products. Pair some accessories with a dress, and your customer suddenly sees more than a pair of shoes and earrings. She sees the perfect date night outfit that she needs for this weekend.
3. Coupon Codes
Coupons are highly influential in driving consumer behavior. 58% of customers say a coupon would increase their likelihood to purchase. These offers also result in quicker sales since they are limited-time use.
Apply coupon codes to older or seasonal collections or encourage shoppers to spend more with a dollar amount over a certain spending threshold.
4. Live Sales
Facebook Lives have the highest organic reach of any social posts, which is why retailers everywhere are using them to deliver their own personalized shopping channels.
Live Sales leverage urgency, limited quantities, competition, and real-time engagement to accelerate sales. They’re perfect for offloading inventory with an end-of-season clearance sale.
5. Auto-reposts
Another way to move older inventory is to repeat previous sales posts on your Facebook Group or Pages. Automation can schedule these older posts to post to repeat after a certain amount of time has passed. This will bump those older items back to your customers’ newsfeeds with minimal work on your part.
The Takeaway
Inventory reduction is a hurdle that all retailers have to face at some point. It doesn’t need to be difficult, however. These strategies will give your shoppers a fresh perspective on older inventory so you can get rid of it quickly.
To stay ahead of rising excess inventory, you’ll need to pair these strategies with a good inventory management system. A quality system will keep inventory information up to date in real-time so you can discover customer demand, cut carrying costs, and pinpoint aged and obsolete inventory at a glance.
