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Many who are opening a dollar store will go through a fairly lengthy process to order and receive their dollar store merchandise. In many cases there will be a requirement to pay for merchandise before it is even pulled, packed, palletized and shipped to you by your supplier. While you have little direct control over the time it takes from payment to the merchandise actually arriving at your store, it is important to stay in touch with your suppliers and tactfully set dates for shipment and arrival at your store. Where you do have great control is from the moment a delivery truck arrives at your door with new merchandise. In this article I present how to reduce product receiving time. I include 6 powerful tips to use in your business. Tip #1) Create a documented set of rules regarding the dollar store merchandise receiving process. This should be done before even opening a dollar store for business. Include rules such as incoming freight cannot remain in the receiving area for more than 24 hours, all cartons must be counted and inspected as a part of accepting incoming shipments, and only trained personnel can be in the receiving area. 2) Assemble everything required to handle merchandise receiving duties before the merchandise arrives. Make sure hand trucks, stock carts, box knives, packing tape, pens and all other required tools are available and in their designated location. Don’t allow the receiving process to slow down because a receiving clerk needs to hunt for the tools of the job. 3) For large shipments schedule extra help. If you are receiving larger orders, or if you are a high-volume store, having trained employees help receive those orders will minimize the time required before in-demand dollar store merchandise is on the sales floor and available for sale. 4) Provide adequate space for the receiving function. Whenever you fail to purchase a full case, suppliers will combine multiple partial cases into a single shipping carton. In some cases this will be done with care. In other cases items will be tossed into a box haphazardly, thus resulting in a huge carton of arbitrarily mixed items. It takes lots of time and space to quickly and accurate sort through the items to be truly positive the appropriate number of items has arrived. 5) Minimize interruptions while receiving items. This is a time to focus on the receiving process. You need to be able to accurately count item quantities, verify product numbers, and validate the quality of incoming freight. Broken boxes, damaged merchandise, and other problems must be noted immediately to make resolution with suppliers and freight haulers more likely to be successful. 6) Be sure empty stocking carts are waiting as your dollar store merchandise is received and ready to go to the sales floor. This isn’t a time to build mountains of cartons on the floors in the receiving area or on the store sales floor. Merchandise should be received and then immediately be placed into stocking carts for placement on the sales floor. Receiving is a very important part of the inventory handling and management process when opening a dollar store. Be sure to do everything possible to make successful receiving quick and trouble-free for your business. Remember; your dollar store merchandise makes no profits until it is received, properly priced and placed on display in the sales area of your store. To your success when opening a dollar store! Want the best ideas to earn from your dollar store business? Check out "Tactics to Add Streams of Income to Your Dollar Store Business" at www.OpeningADollarStore.com.
Bob Hamilton is an entrepreneur, author, writer, business consultant and trainer.
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