Too Busy to Blog: Exploring Inventory Management...

So, at the beginning of the year, I promised myself I'd keep up with my blog and not slip back into my usual pattern of forgetting about it halfway through the year. Guess what? I totally forgot! Ugh... But on the bright side, I didn't forget about my jewelry. I actually had three shows in July that kept me super busy. And this month, even though I only have one show coming up next week, I've still been pretty occupied with making jewelry and updating my Etsy shop.

So, as a small business owner, what else have I been up to besides making jewelry over the past month and a half? Well, I've been trying to figure out a better way to keep track of my inventory. If you know my jewelry, you know I've got a bunch of different earring styles, and each one comes in various color combinations. Now that I'm branching out into consignment and wholesale, I've got multiple places to sell my pieces. This makes it tricky to know exactly what's in stock at any moment and, more importantly, what I need to make to keep up with the different sales channels. When I was prepping for my July shows, I actually had to spread out and sort through all my earrings just to figure out what I needed to make. That really hit home that I need a better system!

As I've been working on improving how to track my inventory, I also realized I need to be more consistent with how I name all the different styles and color combinations that I offer. This will make it easier to filter what I have in stock and keep things clear for customers and wholesale buyers. I'd love to hear from other small business creatives about how you've tackled your inventory tracking challenges. I'm still figuring things out, but I'm thinking that some smart spreadsheets in Excel might help me get the job done.

Like I said before, August is pretty chill when it comes to shows, so I've had some time to dive into Excel. I've got a rough draft going and I'll keep tweaking it over the next few weeks (I'll share my progress in future blog posts). I figured I'd wrap up this post with some recent work from this past weekend... work in progress: creating decal pieces soon to be earrings!