You see the perfect birthday dress or this cute swimsuit for your vacation next week and when you try to add it, it says that it is out of stock! Whyyyy!? Yes, we probably have all been a customer that couldn’t get a specific item because they were out of stock. Sometimes you can be added to a waitlist or get a notification once it’s back in stock but what if it is for a special occasion, a vacation next week, etc.?
Companies have come out with a lot of strategies to increase demand and increase sales. They just need to keep in mind that when demand and sales increases, their supply needs to also increase. That is if you don’t brand yourself as being exclusive and only making limited editions and quantities always.
An example of a company that failed to do proper inventory management is Sunny Co Clothing. In summer of 2017 they had a brilliant marketing idea. On Instagram, they published a photo of one of their bathing suits and the caption said that whoever reposts this post in the next 24 hours will receive a free bathing suit from them. How amazing does that sound?
Brilliant. It worked. BUT what was wrong? They did not anticipate their post going so viral and so many reposts coming in and were not equipped with enough inventory! The bathing suit was sold out so quickly. In fact, it sounded so amazing that they got 50,000 orders in 35 minutes of releasing the promo codes to the people that reposted and tagged them.
And not only did they get so much attention and awareness of their promotion, they also went from 7,000 to 784,000 Instagram followers pretty much over night.
On a side note, they also had some other criticism like the fact that the swimsuits weren’t really free, since they still charged for shipping and the shipping costs of $12,98 were higher than the actual shipping plus the cost of making the suit (from Alibaba) would cost.
That aside, if a company doesn’t meet your expectations in terms of having what you want in stock, potential customers will remember it. If it happens often enough or during a hyped event like Sunny Co’s, it will probably keep customers away in the future. It is a simple form of trust. Trust that the store has it ready to be shipped and that the right product arrives: right color, right size. And please arrive in time!
So what can we learn from them? Make sure you have enough inventory to match the demand that might come from a promotion! It can be risky to have a lot of inventory when you don’t know how a campaign will go but it can also be risky not to have enough when the campaign goes viral because customers will be angry and disappointed if they can’t get what they expected to get.
BeeMarketing 