Having a warehouse to hold your product and create a better inventory system can be very important no matter how big your business may be. Having a proper organization process is one of the leading ways to keep your business and product flow more efficient and have a faster turnaround for your customer.
With that being said, depending on if you have a larger business or a small business can change how your warehouse may look and how it may run. There are always things to look at before going headfirst into buying a warehouse. This can help make sure it is going to help and not hurt your business in the end.
Experience
When it comes to shipping out your products, you don’t want to lose that special touch you might have had when you were shipping out of your home. If you have a small business, you are offering a more one-on-one experience to your clientele and you don’t want to lose that closeness with your market if you were to get a warehouse to work out of. That could mean having one or two people working by your side to help package and ship products. This can help keep the brand experience while also making the process of shipping out products faster.
However, if you are a larger business, this means you already have a rapport with your market and they know what to expect when they order your products. This doesn’t mean to not handle your shipments with care, but it can mean that you don’t need to have such a close hands-on experience with your shipping process.
Timing
If you are a smaller business, you may be working with the orders that you currently have on hand. Meaning that you are not bulk buying your inventory in advance because you don’t know if you will be sending them back out to customers. This can help you save money while also saving space within your warehouse as well. It could mean you are shipping our products just in time with your orders, no more and no less. To keep yourself organized, a last-in, first-out pallet racking system might be key to ensure you are moving products quickly.
Having a larger business could mean the opposite. You may expect to have a large number of orders coming in and you may want to order large amounts of your product so you have that to ship out later on. If you do have a large inventory like this, you may want to create an organized pallet stacking system to be able to move products faster.
No matter if you are a small or large business, the experience you bring to your customers and the quality of your products can make the world of difference. This can even help your small business become a large business. However, in the beginning, it is important to look at what you need and what a warehouse can do for you and your company.