As I’m writing this, I’m looking around the lounge room of my house. There are boxes, shirts and packaging materials everywhere. It’s actually getting a little overwhelming. It’s not always like this. So I decided to write a post about inventory and the best ways to avoid the situation I find myself in right now.

When it comes to storing your tees, the rule is to keep them protected, dry and folded to make sure they stay in mint condition. There’s nothing worse than accidentally damaging a tee and knowing you’ll never be able to sell it.

Storing your shirts in an organised and manageable way makes a huge difference to the way you do business. It’s really all about coming up with a system that works for you and your label.

The two best storage methods I’ve tried are tubs and shelves:

Storing your tees on shelves

If you have the space to do it, then storing your tees on shelves is the easiest and most effective storage method. But it does require space. It also can be expensive. If you have a look at your local furniture store you’ll see a decent shelf can set you back a tidy penny. But if you have a look on eBay, or in your local classifieds it is possible to pick up a bargain.

Try labeling your shelves with the shirt names and sizes and keep them stored in poly bags.

The storage system at Ugmonk

Storing your tees in tubs

Tubs are great, mainly because they hold a lot and are easy to stack on top of each other, cutting down on the space required to use them. When you’re using tubs, I would recommend getting one for each of your designs. I would then make sure all of your tees are bagged, size labeled and stacked in accordance to their size. This makes it easy to reach in and grab the size you need.

This is how Fuscare store their gear

 

Now that we’ve covered storage, there’s the issue of maintaining your inventory. If you have an online storefront that tracks your inventory for you this job is pretty easy. Each time you make a sale, the site will deduct the garment from your inventory. However, if you are like me and also sell offline you’ll need to keep a closer eye on things.

Every two weeks I like to take all my tees of their shelves and write down a tally of how many shirts I have. Then I log into my BigCartel account and adjust the stock numbers. It might sound a little pedantic but I like to make sure that when someone orders something from the site, I can deliver.

I also keep a secondary stock chart that I made in Excel just to be safe.

I’m sure everyone has a different process and way of doing things, but I wanted to share what I have personally found works and hopefully it will help you keep a close eye on things. If you’ve found another way to store and track your tees that you think others could benefit from, please share below.

- Georgie