Tips for Choosing the Best Warehouse Space for Your Inventory

Tips for Choosing the Best Warehouse Space for Your Inventory Many entrepreneurs make the mistake of thinking all warehouse spaces are the same when they first get started in ecommerce, but this couldn’t be further from the truth. When it comes to choosing the right warehouse space for your inventory, there are several factors to consider, including everything from climate to layout to your company’s ability to grow in the future.

Climate When you think of climate control, you may think that you’re safe as long as you aren’t selling supplements, beverages, food products, or other consumables. Unfortunately, this simply isn’t true. Temperature isn’t the only factor that goes into climate control; humidity also plays a tremendous role, and it can have a devastating effect on a wide variety of items. If you sell clothing, for example, excess humidity could very easily cause mold to grow inside a stack, and you may not even see it until you’re about to pack it into an order. Humidity can also damage small electronics over time. Be sure that you choose a climate-controlled space for your inventory for these reasons.

Scalability When you start looking for warehouse space, there’s a good chance that you’ll want to lease it – at least at first. Not only is warehouse space hard to come by these days, but it’s also expensive and typically comes with a five-year lease.

What will happen if you choose warehouse space that is too small to support your growing business in three years? You may think you can just lease a space that’s larger than your current needs, but if your business is small, can you really afford it? Be sure that you take all of this into consideration early on, and if scalability is a big problem for you, consider outsourcing your warehousing and inventory management needs, instead.

Layout The larger and more popular your online business becomes, the more important efficient order picking and packing becomes, too. Because of this, consider the layout of the warehouse space before you commit. Ideally, you’ll want a square space. Your frequently-ordered items and sizes can stay near the packing area, and the ones that aren’t ordered as frequently can be further away to save you precious time and energy. If your warehouse space is very long with only one row on either side, this gives you very limited room for your more popular items and could make each trip out into the area a longer one. Think about the number of products you will sell as well as the popularity of your items to ultimately determine the best layout for your warehouse.

If you are ready to move your inventory out into an actual warehouse, it is crucial that you really take the time to think about the implications that climate, scalability, and even warehouse layout can have on your ecommerce-based business. It’s all about selling a quality product as efficiently as possible while making sure you save your business plenty of room to grow. Fortunately, this is exactly what you can achieve by outsourcing your warehousing, too.