The "box", the stock and how to manage it in an ecommerce | minimalism

Sunday May 10, 10 in the morning, I look at the stock of t-shirts and it is close to zero in several sizes, we have broken stock, again...

17 days ago we launched the New Minimalism , with new products, new prices, new factories, new packs and new fabrics .

The reception has been very good, our public has perfectly understood what we want to do as a brand and where we are heading ( sustainable manufacturing , affordable prices, transparency , utility, durability and no logo ) but we continue to fail, we are not able to estimate how much we are going to sell for many excels that we do.

It is not only because we do not know how to measure or estimate, it is because we must play with the available money to be able to buy . That is the main problem "the box".

Today we are going to explain what is behind each order we make and how with each sale we recover the investment made.

Most small brands like ours must/must stock our products and then sell them . To do this, we must have enough cash or a line of credit granted by the bank or by the supplier itself (this is not usually the case) to be able to carry out this order/investment.

These investments are based on the quantities purchased .

Imagine that you have to place an order for 10,000 t-shirts. For each t-shirt you will pay €6 for example. You will need €60,000 that you must pay the provider in 2-3 payments depending on the trust you have with it.

If everything goes well and you start selling the purchased products, you begin to recover the investment and obtain a profit for each sale . In our case we have a 40 and 55% gross margin per product.

Normally you finish recovering the investment when you are already thinking about placing another order. Therefore, you have months where the investment is very strong and others where you only have income .

In short, you need money, either in cash or in the form of credit to be able to launch new products or larger orders. This applies to the line of women's clothing that we want to launch, we will work on it according to "the box".

That is the ABC of small brands, stock, invest, take risks, recover and repeat . Obviously it has a fairly strong risk, if you do not sell, you do not recover the investment, which is why many companies consider crowdfunding platforms to launch their products or make a reservation/pre-sale of them.

And that is exactly what we will do with the new order of shirts that we are already manufacturing. We will allow you to buy the shirts and we will start shipping them the week of May 25 , when they will be in our warehouse and the coronavirus situation will be more stable, hopefully.

The rest of the products : Sweatshirts, socks, underpants, backpacks and wallets will be sent as usual.

It is the only option we have found since many of you are asking us to be able to make your purchases.

We hope you understand.

Thank you for continuing to grow with us.

minimal team

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