Is your sewing shop inventory hard to navigate? Do you find yourself forgetting where things are, if you’ve run out of a certain fabric, or if you even have a particular fabric in stock to begin with?
Unfortunately, this happens to too many sewing store owners. Organization is key, but it’s difficult to find the right organization process for your business.
Enter: serialized inventory.
Serialized inventory helps you keep track of all of your inventory — without the headache. In this blog, we’ll explore the what, why, and how of serialized inventory for your sewing shop.
What Is Serialized Inventory?
First things first: What is serialized inventory?
Simply put, serialized inventory is a process in which you give each of your products a unique identity in your inventory software. This is important for sewing shops because they often have rows of similar looking fabric or small sewing items, so organization is key for you and your customers.
Think of all the stores you went to this week. It’s likely that most — if not all — had barcodes on their products. That’s serialized inventory! If you take a closer look at those barcodes, you’ll see a unique number under the lines. That number helps the store know where their products are and how much they have in store.
Related Read: Helpful Tips on How To Conduct a Physical Inventory Count
H2 Why Serialized Inventory Matters for Sewing Shops
Imagine your sewing shop — it likely has rows and rows of sewing material like fabric or sewing machines. The fact of the matter is, sewing shops carry a ton of products. When you implement serialized inventory for your sewing shop, you give a unique number or code to each product. This allows you to know exactly how much product you have and where it’s located in your store.
With serialized inventory, you can:
- Track trends of your products.
- Make sure you’re in compliance with government regulations.
- Organize your store with inventory management software.
- Trace who has bought certain products in case of a recall.
- Know when you need to restock a product.
Once you’ve set up your serialized inventory, the process is seamless. There are really no cons to adopting this inventory management strategy. Besides putting new products in your software, the process is entirely automated — which means less room for error.
Related Read: 6 Reasons Customers Still Want Online AND Offline
How To Implement Serialized Inventory in Sewing Shops
Although implementing serialized inventory ultimately depends on which software you choose, the process is generally the same. Even though kicking off this new process may seem like a heavy lift, it doesn’t take too much time.
Here are the general steps that you can expect to take when implementing serialized inventory:
- Choose an inventory management system that best services your sewing shop.
- Add a new product in your system in order to generate a unique number for each item.
- Print out a barcode for each of your items with a barcode printer.
- Scan each item with your barcode scanner to enter the amount of product you have into your inventory management system.
- Repeat the process when you decide to sell new sewing products.
It’s as simple as that. However, to truly streamline this process, you need an inventory management system made specifically for sewing stores.
Specialized systems often have integrations with manufacturers so that popular sewing products are already entered into the system. Because sewing stores sell such a diverse range of products, you could be wasting hours on extra work without a specialized inventory management system.
Related Read: How To Set Up a Barcode Inventory System for Your Business
Manage Your Serialized Inventory With Like Sew
Like Sew is an all-in-one point of sale (POS) system made for sewing, quilt, and fabric stores. With Like Sew, your POS and inventory management systems are integrated on the same software.
Like Sew also integrates with popular manufacturers so that you can have a preloaded product catalog as you’re implementing serialized inventory for your sewing store. This is a necessity — from endless sewing material to a diverse range of sewing machines, you need a product catalog to save time.
In addition to helping you with all of your inventory and sales needs, Like Sew also allows you to create an e-commerce website so that your customers can shop your inventory from the comfort of their own homes. Plus, you can send out marketing communications to keep up customer loyalty.
Serialized inventory is paramount when it comes to your sewing store. Not only does it make the process easier for your customers, but it makes the back end process much more efficient for you and your employees. Schedule a demo today to learn more about how Like Sew can elevate your sewing business.
