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The holiday season is a busy time of year in the jewelry findings industry. The past few months at Nina Designs were intense as we processed time-sensitive holiday orders, managed inventory levels with volatile silver costs, prepped for our biggest trade show of the year in Tucson, and all of this with less staff than usual thanks to a particularly nasty cold season. Our days were about working as efficiently as possible and focusing only on the essentials that had to get done (like processing orders), not on things that we wanted to get done (like designing new styles). A big exhale could often be heard around 5 pm, in relief and thanks that we’d successfully made it through another day!

Clara and Anna dwarfed behind stacks and stacks of Tucson 2010 stock prep.

One “aha” moment lead to systems changes that will save us 2-3 hours a week of tedious data entry. Scrambling to get orders out the door, we realized that some of the product labeling could be done efficiently during production, another huge time saver.

Under normal staffing circumstances, we would have continued with our standard processes, but when pushed beyond our capacity, we began to question the process and ask “why am I spending 45 minutes on this task when I have so many other things that have to get done? There MUST be a faster way to do this!” Working beyond capacity forced a shift in perspective, opening our minds to different possibilities and allowing an innovative solution to bubble to the surface. The time we saved can now be spent on doing the things we want to do, like sketching new designs!

In the jewelry supply business and in the jewelry business in general inventory management is often the very key to success. Inventory management has a variety of challenges and is always fluctuating. As the inventory manager at Nina Designs, I would like to share some of my current approaches to inventory management that may help you or inspire a dialogue of further discussion on the topic. In October, I discussed “New Items and Opening Orders.” In December, I discussed “Reviewing Past Sales and Projecting Into The Future,” now I will discuss “Being Careful of the Outliers.”

If you are regularly reviewing your inventory and sales, you can determine when there is a spike in sales on a normally slow item. I call these items “outliers” and give them additional scrutiny. While this spike is exciting, you don’t want to over order or invest too much of your budget into an item with sales that may crash. It’s worthwhile to take the time to do an inventory report for that item to determine how many customers are purchasing it, who is purchasing it, and how often each customer is purchasing it.

Example of an outlier: Snowflake Mandala

I will usually look at a year’s worth of the past sales. If only a small number of customers are purchasing the outlier and there is one large volume purchase, I may reduce my re-order for that reason, especially if the large purchase is made by a new customer or if this particular customer has never ordered this item before. I cannot depend on that customer re-ordering in the same volume or even re-ordering the outlier ever again. It isn’t a wise financial decision to order a large volume based on one customer’s sales because we may be stuck with that inventory and unable to use those funds to re-order other items that are selling frequently to multiple customers.

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