Creating a Online Store When I only stock one of each product.

Hi,

I am currently thinking about starting an online store for my parents business. They have a small childrens clothing store in the North East of England and I feel that they would do really well on-line.

As a Software Developer I am going to create the site myself and help to run/maintain it. The issue I have is that the shop only keeps stock of one of each size for each item.

So for example if we have a product called "Red Jumper" and it comes in the sizes "S", "M" and "L", we would only have one of each of these:

1 x "Red Jumper - Size S"
1 x "Red Jumper - Size M"
1 x "Red Jumper - Size L"

I can program the site to show that the products are out of stock if someone buys that item but do you think that this would look bad? Say someone comes to the online store and wants a Red Jumper and the sizes S and M have already been sold this only leaves the customer with one option "L".

Another issue I am trying to get around is the fact that some of the items we would like to put on the online store are also sold in the actual store. If we sell an item in the store how can we automatically update this in the online store so we dont have two purchases of the same item when we only have 1 in stock?

Thanks for any help or advice.

Boldonglen

 

Hi Boldonglen,

Coming from one shop owner to the other, I think you should wait until you have enough product to resolve the issues you pointed out above. In my experience we will not add a product to our shop until we have at least 5 of each variation (be it color, size, etc...). That said, I think you should apply the same principle to this.

I would advise you to keep Brick and Mortar inventory and your online shop inventory separate. Only under the situation that your Brick and Mortar and your Online Shop's inventory is synched would I even consider keeping one inventory.

If you have any questions let me know!

 

Hi Thrifty,

Thanks for the reply and I agree with you on keeping the stock separate. I have recommended that my parents only put items on their site that they are not going to put into the retail store.

Regarding your comment about waiting until we have enough product to solve the issue this is not going to be possible. The store has been running for 26 years now and has been doing well. However over the last couple of years sales have dropped due to online shopping becoming more popular.

The reason we only stock one of each item is because that is all the company can afford at the moment with the sales dropping in the retail store. Without sales and revenue we are unable to order more stock and therefore unable to purchase more than one variation per product. The intention is to set up the shop with 1 variation per product and if the site becomes popular and sales increase then we can buy more products and variations.

Thanks,

Boldonglen

 

Hi Boldonglen,

I do believe keeping seperate inventory is going to be the only viable option then. I completely understand starting small and having limited inventory. One of my online ventures did the same thing. Utilize everything at your disposal to market your business and acquire customers. Put back every dollar you can to allocate to product. It's a hard road when you're trying to grow but lack the inventory.

 

Honestly I think that this can only be posible if the salesperson in the shop logs in to the website just after the item was purchased and marks it as unavailable.
Btw, with such a limited stock, why don't your parents just use Ebay as a start of their online sales?

 

Hi Kim,

Thanks for the reply. Yeah I might try and install a laptop in the shop that the staff can use to mark items as sold this would be once we started selling stock in both the shop and the online store.

My parents already have an eBay store and it is doing very well this is one of the main reasons we want to set up a online store so we can sell more and so it is more professional. One of our suppliers does not like us selling their products on eBay and therefore would want us to have our own online store before we could sell their products online.

 

Oh, well that's impressive
Btw, did you think about creating a virtual stock for items currently out of stock, but arriving shortly? You know how some ads on Amazon have "Available" written in green letters, while some others have "Can be shipped within 5-10 days" (or some other time frame). In those instances, the seller created a virtual stock for pre-sales. They know the item is on its way so they just offer it in advance. Maybe you can do a similar thing with your online shop - just let it be known that the item in question won't be delivered ASAP and let the buyers know the time frame.
Since your parents obviously work with their suppliers for a long time, I assume they can trust them to truly deliver the item in time to be shipped to the buyers.

 

Thanks for the idea it sounds interesting. I am not sure how quickly the suppliers can get us new stock. I have a feeling that we have to tell them how many items and what products we want way in advance and are unable to purchase a few here and there but I could be wrong.

 

Which shopping cart solutoon you will be using for new e-store

 

Initially staring out with OpenCart and I will be building I top of this. Any extra functionality I need I will be building myself.

 

On glabex you can create store and add several product types as size, color etc. Glabex also has marketplace, so you would have additional exposure, sadn it social integrated. i sue it. marketplace doe snot have much traffic but you always can sell via you store and use all social features, as friends inviter to like, share on social, like posting on social etc. so i like it and recommend.

 

Just Create Your online store with Woocommerce and boost your cell after getting its own pure native mobile app at free of cost..