Organize your inventory like a pro eBay seller

This video is for resellers looking to convert their inventory into the box system with sku numbers!

None of these links are affiliated.

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Want to send some stickers for the community sticker board? Send them to:
Carrie at Home
1890 1st Capitol Dr.
P.O. Box 732
St. Charles MO 63301

[carrieathome]

When it comes to reusing old numbers, for me personally, it would be too much brain processing everyday to manage it that way. I misspoke about the consolidation portion. Kyle said it’s like 30 mins, not an hour. I also forgot to include that we do it once a month.

I’d rather do 30 min process once/month vs however long it would take daily to assign unused numbers to 30+ new items, filling in the empty slots here and there, and having to re-sku a return because that returns number is now being used by another item.

That’s a lot of busy work and not efficient and streamlined.

[DavidLansaw-bmzb]

Only thing different I do is when I take that picture. It’s on a scale. So you have all the info for shipping. But that’s the game easy and clear. Love her

[michaelholmanminKC]

You talked about the labels sticking to plastic easier than to the clothing. Have you thought about getting the clear bags like they give you at the dry cleaners to put over your big jackets? Then you would still have the label on plastic, the jacket would be still protected from any elements, and you have mitigated the risk of a sticker falling off of a jacket…

[lauradonnell]

Your tips on how to stack the clothes so it lets the air out and you can squish more in is genius. It makes so much sense and my brain wouldn't have ever come up with it! lol

[carlawaldemar]

Finally! You are the first person who actually shows how to and where to enter the sku number. Thanks so much!

[jaclynscott]

In the midst of switching over from the Bin System to the box system. Waiting on more shelves to be able to continue. So much faster/easier to find things!! Like you had mentioned, it takes a bit to switch, but once it is done, it is a game changer. More tie saved, and space to store inventory!

[PolarBearPredator]

Wow this is the best most organized simple clear system to follow. I really was a clear tote guy and that is just not enough when you scale to size.

[Canuck_Gal]

Tipping the box is such a great idea! I would have never thought of that. Here I’ve been all aggravated that my bags fall over before the box gets full! Lol Another helpful video Carrie!

[ImallamaToo]

I sell vintage jewelry, so this system won't work for me unfortunately. I do think it's absolutely brilliant for clothing, etc. I use clear fishing tackle boxes with removable dividers - the boxes are stackable, and I have them on a shelving system. Each box is labeled, as is each row (E1, E2, etc for earrings). It's been a game changer for me. Organization is key. No more missing items! Love your videos. 😊

[mackcountry_cache]

Quick and to the point. Thanks for taking the time to share your system with us.

[Cant_find_good_Handle]

Nice vid and channel. I independently came up with this method and started doing this back in 2017 before daily refinement put out his videos on it a couple years later. I was initially mad that a YouTuber had figured it out and everyone was sharing this idea with all my competitors lol. I also use to design fulfillment centers at Amazon, but I resell now and prefer eBay over Amazon as a reseller.

A solution for the consolidation issue as you start to get a lot of racks is that you should assign several storage racks an aisle letter. Or wall letter if up against different walls. Basically some kind of letter that makes it easy to identify different sections of your inventory. If you use multiple rooms for storage you can still use one letter per every few racks unless you scale to a business with 100’s of storage racks. Then you would need a two or three letter system.

The key point is that you can break your consolidation up so you only have to consolidate one aisle or one wall’s worth of items at a time instead of your whole inventory. Also as you grow it will be faster to find items. You can search for “A” and only print those after printing all the consolidated multi item orders shipping first. So print the consolidated shipping then print A00001, A00002, ect. Then do the “B” numbers. Those would also start at B00001 as well and be it’s own independent number system. That makes it faster to pick as well. It will also take much longer to go through your sku numbers and if you did for some reason you could start over that aisle as AA as long as your not scaling past 20 something aisles.

I would not do individual racks as there own letter because it would be harder to assign sku numbers to items as you store them or before photographing because you might have to store a batch into two different racks after consolidating, and each rack would become its own consolidation project. It starts to be like you mention in your pinned comment about why it is not as efficient doing single bin numbers. Also having 3 to 5 separate number systems for 15 to 25 storage racks is really not harder to manage for a small business. But needing a full label system for each rack and figuring out which items can fit in to one rack vs another before assigning a sku would become convoluted to manage with 15 to 20 something storage racks. And be less time efficient.

But 3 to 5 racks per aisle letter, depending on your throughput and turn over, is a good design trade off. This is because you can still quickly consolidate an aisle to free up enough boxes for your entire next batch to be stored using the same aisle numbers. And if you scaled to a 50 to 100 racks and got a little fulfillment storage place you could just have an employee do one or a target number of aisles on some kind of scheduled routine. At peak near Christmas you would obviously have to be doing it more often in order to maximizing your capacity. Also if you get a lot larger by aisle consolidation can be done without a major disruption to the overall business that a full consolidation would take.

At a small to midsize scale you will spend the same amount of time consolidating, but this will make it a simpler manageable task that can be done with each or every few listing batches vs a random problem that sneaks up on you every few weeks. And there is no down side to doing at your scale but only benefit in pick times now and easier consolidation as you grow.

Also if you did scale this to a larger fulfillment center you would in theory eventually start losing time with the complexity of consolidating 50 to 100 racks as you would need to do it more often at that scale to maximize your capacity utilization vs by aisle. This is because the gaps in your inventory would be spread out over a larger space. Like 100 racks that all need to be consolidated to get to the end with the empty boxes. So let’s say you scale to where you fill up one racks worth of boxes per day and your selling about the same your going to have to consolidate the full inventory every day when you get close to filling up your inventory. But by aisle you can assign one photographer an aisle or two to consolidate before they photograph the next batch.

There are a couple eBay reseller business that have got that big. You could also run into an issue where you are nearing your capacity at peak pre Christmas time. That might force you to have to do things more inefficiently to keep your storage full. Otherwise you will lose capacity spread out over your inventory.

A scenario would be only have time to get halfway through before you needed to store more items. You could end up having to make a special sign to stick out from one of the racks somewhere in the middle to show employees where to pick from if they get over a certain number. You could also still shift the half full boxes over and put them at the end but that would be waisting time as your going to have to do that when you consolidate those later anyway. If you have a pre storage area or never let the last storage rack get filled up before starting consolidation to ensure you had a good buffer. But then you would not be utilizing that area to be filled with storage.

Without aisles it could get complex real quick at peak pre Christmas time of year with a few employees, and possibly lead to mistakes with shipping and the order of storage. Or you would just have to sacrifice storage capacity or plan to pay higher rent for a larger storage facility than you could otherwise have gotten away with.

Before being an engineer at Amazon I also had experience as an area manager at target and at Amazon at a site that used single Asin pallet storage not just randomized bins. Consolidating pallet inventory and bin fluffing partially filled rainbow racks actually becomes a massively convoluted process as you scale a storage business. Eventually it becomes a full time job for a few associates to do and takes a lot of management attention as well.

Fortunately the nature this niche eBay clothing store business is that you can mitigate that complexity by treating every few aisles as one big storage bin.

[steelbluetj]

Thanks for this video. I do this as a side hustle so I have a smaller store of about 100-150 items. I have 2 shelving units with the clear bins. I label each bin, but even with my small store, I am still rummaging through a bin looking for the items that sell. I will be implementing this setup too. I think It will also help with creating more storage space since the plastic bins take up so much room. Great idea! Thanks!

[eastcoastthrifter]

I have and always use clear totes. I don’t like exposure to the elements that boxes have. I have 9, 000 listings and a lot of totes .

[goldenspiralresell]

Great vid as usual, Carrie! Organization is CRUCIAL!

[lucymcconville]

FABULOUS vide for me, just starting out! Thank you so much for taking the time to film and share! I feel like I will start out with good habits to make things less complicated from the get-go. What would we do without YouTube and generous content creators like you?!

[RichardHazard-ekdz]

Great video as always. The tip on adding sku numbers onto the ebay listing page was super helpful!

[jeannieakana]

Omg!! You are so right! I am afraid someone will buy something and have no idea where I put it 😳😳 Thank you so much! Grateful for you 🙏🙏❤❤

[darcyvawser]

Excellent quality video. Thank you for sharing! I am one of those environment people so I will also be hacking the sku stickers/poly bags by buying blank tags and a pricing gun, write the sku on tag, then when it sells covering up with branded sticker. 😌 I’m quite proud of this plastic less solution and feel great about cardboard instead of the plastic bins I have now! 🎉

[PopConOfTheFuture]

I just started switching my 250-ish items over to this system a week ago! Helping so much already😊

[bonniebrooks]

Thank you for sharing all of this info! I’ll probably rewatch it several times!! ✅