Fabric store inventory is unique compared to traditional retail stores. You’re tracking fat quarters, pre-cuts, jelly rolls, interfacing, notions, and kits. Add in variations like fabric width, fiber content, colorway, and designer collections, and suddenly your inventory gets complicated fast.
Up to 43% of small businesses aren’t even tracking inventory. This is a set up for failure, especially when inventory is your single largest expense. If you’re still using handwritten price tags or manual inventory logs, important details slip through the cracks.
Barcode inventory management helps fabric and quilt stores bring order to the chaos, giving you better visibility into what’s selling, what needs restocking, and what’s just taking up shelf space.
In this blog, we’ll cover seven practical tips to make barcode inventory management work for your fabric store — from labeling and stock counts to syncing online inventory and improving checkout.
Barcode systems aren’t just for big-box retailers. In a fabric store, they help simplify the complexity that comes with selling textiles in multiple formats.
Here’s how:
With the right point of sale (POS) system — one designed specifically for how fabric stores operate — you can make barcode inventory management work for you. Check out these tips to get started.
You’re not selling T-shirts or electronics. You’re selling fabric by the yard, half-yard, quarter-yard, or even down to the eighth. Some customers want five yards off the bolt, while others just need a fat quarter. Your barcode system needs to reflect these options.
Instead of using one generic barcode per bolt, assign separate barcodes based on unit types or product variations. For example, you might use one barcode for Kona Cotton in Parchment by the yard, and a different one for the same fabric sold as a fat quarter bundle. Modern POS systems let you easily generate and print these barcode labels in store, so you can tag new fabric as soon as it hits the shelf.
Related Read: What Is Fractional Yardage? (And How To Track It)
Manually counting bolts, bundles, and bags of buttons takes forever — and the moment your doors open, those numbers are already off. Barcode inventory management allows you to scan items during a physical count and instantly update your stock levels in the system.
With a barcode scanner or mobile device, you and your staff can walk the floor, scan products, and update quantities without writing anything down. If your POS system supports batch updates, you can refresh entire sections — like your flannel wall or seasonal collection — in a single session. This saves time and reduces mistakes, especially during busy seasons like shop hops or the holiday rush.
Customers don’t always shop by color or fabric type — they shop by collection. Maybe they want the latest Tula Pink release or need three coordinates from a Riley Blake Designs holiday line. If your inventory is just a long list of product SKUs, it’s hard to help them (and even harder to reorder).
With barcode inventory management, a solid POS system lets you group products by designer, manufacturer, theme, or collection. This way, you can track which collections are flying off the shelves and which ones are sitting. When you run promotions or bundle products online, it’s easier to feature full lines and make recommendations.
Related Read: Serialized Inventory for Sewing Shops: The What, Why, and How
Fabric sales almost never land on whole numbers. Customers might ask for 2⅝ yards of quilting cotton or ¾ yard of minky. If you’re adjusting stock manually, there’s too much room for error.
A system built for barcode inventory management in fabric stores can allow for decimal-based quantities. As a result, when you cut 1.25 yards and scan the item, your system reduces inventory by exactly this amount. You don’t need to round, fudge numbers, or enter adjustments later.
Over time, this accuracy adds up. It also helps you track which fabrics are nearing the end of the bolt. This can be useful when offering remnant sales or cutting end-of-roll discounts.
Related Read: Manage Fractional Fabric Inventory With These 8 Tips & Tools
Fabric pricing is all over the place. Basic solids might cost $7.99 per yard, while imported linen prints are $22 per yard. On top of this, kits, panels, and widebacks have their own price tags. One mistyped price and you could lose profit or accidentally overcharge a customer.
With barcode scanning, pricing is tied directly to the product’s barcode. When scanned, the POS system pulls the correct price — no mental math or looking it up on a chart. Some systems even print barcodes with embedded pricing, which is ideal for precuts or clearance items.
A barcode-based system also keeps prices consistent across the floor, your website, and your register. This consistency builds trust with your customers — and keeps your books clean.
Selling fabric online? Then you already know how frustrating it is when a product sells on your website but is out of stock on your sales floor — or vice versa. Barcode inventory management bridges this gap.
When a system is set up to sync both in-store and online inventory, a scanned purchase in your shop instantly updates your online quantities. Same goes when someone buys a kit or yardage online. This prevents overselling and keeps customer service stresses to a minimum.
Look for a POS system that can tag online-only SKUs, handle different inventory types (kits vs. bolts vs. bundles), and sync stock levels automatically — so you’re not left with end-of-day cleanup.
Long lines at the register can cost you sales — especially during classes, retreats, or seasonal events. Barcode scanning speeds up the checkout process. Instead of typing product names or prices, your staff simply scans the label and the POS system takes care of the rest.
This is especially helpful when checking out mixed items — like a customer who has six fat quarters, two half-yard cuts, a pattern, and a spool of thread. Scanning each barcode ensures everything rings up accurately, cuts down on customer wait times, and reduces stress for your team.
You didn’t open a fabric store to spend your evenings adjusting spreadsheets or chasing down pricing mistakes. You opened it to inspire creativity and connect with your community. Barcode inventory management helps you do more of this — by making your inventory work for you instead of against you.
Like Sew is an all-in-one POS system built specifically for quilt shops and fabric stores. It’s designed to handle the way you sell — by the yard, by the fat quarter, by the bundle, or by the kit.
With Like Sew’s integrated barcode inventory system, you can:
The barcode features that Like Sew has are built right into the inventory system, so there’s no need for separate software or manual updates. Whether you’re tagging bolts for a new fabric line or scanning kits at the register, every piece works together to save time and reduce errors.
Want to see how it all works?
Schedule a free demo to see what barcode inventory management can do for your fabric store.