Managing your Inventory

Today, I am home from work due to the the A/C in our building not working properly so I decided to work on my jewelry business during this time. In this segment, I want to talk about inventory.

I'm sure you all know what inventory is but for those who don't, Inventory is an itemized list of current goods or assets. In other words, its a list you make to show all the products or goods you have on hand. Now when I first started this, I had no clue on how to handle this. I was just making jewelry and just hanging it around the house. So of course, when I don't know something, I do what any person would do...Research it!

Now if you are not familiar with YouTube, I highly recommend you start here before doing a web search. You will be surprise on the information you can find of people just like you and I who needs help starting out. Now I'm not saying you can't do research on the web but if your're a visual person, YouTube is a great choice!

So when I went on YouTube, I just search inventory or in my case, jewelry inventory. My mind was blown on the information I was able to find on how to handle this. I wrote down ideas and at the end of the day, I found which one works for my particular needs.

In like anything you do for your business, you will spend some time researching things, especially if you are the only person in it. Its all part of the joy of being your own boss. You got to put in the work if you want the bucks!

Any who, for inventorying your items, you want to come up with how you want it to look and where you want to store it. I suggest using a spreadsheet for tracking this information. You want to track the name of your product, color, style, size, quantity and of course the price of each item you have. You also want to come up with a unique tracking system or a SKU number for your items. This can be anything you want but my suggestion is to keep it short and simple. YouTube will show you this as well if you research it.

For storing, I use storage bins that purchased from my local craft store. I have bags that I write my SKU numbers and anything else I might need to help locate and keep track of my products.

I can go on and on for how to do this but I won't. I will tell you this. If you have products or items , start tracking them now. I've been making products for a few years and now I have to go back and add these items to my tracking system. I know now to do this as I make them

but going backwards, well its a lot of work. Not to mention, coming up with a price for my items but that's another topic.

Below is what my tracking system looks like and how I stored my items.