How Retail Giants Can Get Ahead of Inventory Management Issues

Amid supply chain woes, retailers are struggling to keep products on shelves and satisfy consumer demand—even retail giants are facing unprecedented inventory management problems: shortages, overstock, markdowns and lost sales.

The problem is systemic. Companies worry about shortages and err on the side of caution, ordering more than necessary to get inventory in the door. However, as demand softens, they end up with too much inventory and have to cut back and markdown existing inventory. 

So how can retailers address and get ahead of inventory management issues? In 2022, Walmart was caught with 32% more inventory year over year.

"It’s crazy. 8% would have been high, 15% would have been terrible, 32% is apocalyptic. I mean that’s billions of dollars of inventory. That’s just frankly not managed very well.” - Former Walmart President and CEO Bill Simon told CNBC

Introducing Inventory Control Desk, by 7thonline. Inventory Control Desk addresses the challenges retail executives are facing regarding managing inventory level liquidity and optimizing working capital, resulting in improved customer satisfaction and increased profits.

Developed in collaboration with industry-leading clients, Inventory Control Desk was designed. Inventory Control Desk affords visibility to plan and execute promotions, markdowns, transfers and closeouts—addressing growing inventory management problems for multichannel retailers grappling with lost sales. The application provides daily, weekly and monthly sales and inventory positions and generates sales forecasts and alerts for re-orders when inventory positions are at risk. 

For over 25 years, 7thonline has been helping the retail, wholesale and supply chain industries optimize demand planning and inventory management. Deployed as a cloud-native SaaS enterprise solution, 7thonline applications optimize merchandise planning and demand forecasting for clients such as Calvin Klein, Patagonia, Tommy Hilfiger, Michael Kors, Nautica, PVH and more.