When you started your own business, you may have been tempted by the freedom to work when and where you choose. After all, if your business is primarily online you can work from your bed in your pajamas if you want to! That’s unless you have a business where you’re shipping a physical product where you’ll probably run out of space at home pretty quickly.
After that, your warehouse space starts to cost you money, so you have a big incentive for making the best of every bit of space you have. Here are some tips to double your warehouse space:
Get organised
If you take a look around the warehouse you currently have – is it as well organised as it could be? Are there packaging materials hanging around that need to be thrown out? Are the shelves stacked as efficiently as possible? You might be surprised at how much extra room you can squeeze from the space you already have.
Look at the stock you already have
Is too much of your space being taken up by product lines that have been hanging around for too long? You could free up that space by taking a look at how you plan your inventory and by having a sale to shift the old stock that’s taking up precious space.
Add a mezzanine floor
Or if you’re looking for really creative warehouse storage solutions just add an extra floor to the warehouse you already have! Mezzanine floors don’t necessarily have to be for big buildings, you could have a small floor fitted and use it for office space as well as warehouse space.
Change your shelves
Your racking needs could have changed since you started out. For example, if you were selling fewer, larger items then over time switched to many smaller items, then your shelving may no longer be the best use of the space you have. Perhaps you have space at the back of the shelves that are out of reach? Replacing some of the larger shelves with smaller ones could make more space available.
Temporary space
If your stock levels vary throughout the year, for example you have much more stock on the run up to Christmas than you do at any other time year, it could make sense to look at temporary storage.
This can sometimes get expensive, so you could consider sharing storage with a small business that has seasonal peaks at a different time of the year to you, for example in the summer months.
Get someone else to do it for you
Actually, you don’t have to have your own warehouse at all. You could use Amazon’s Fulfilled by Amazon service or a fulfilment service local to you (Google fulfilment and your town/city name for ideas). What you do is send your products to the fulfilment company in bulk and they pick, pack and dispatch them for you when an order comes in. Of course there is a cost to this compared to doing it yourself, but as it frees up your time to do more marketing, it may well be worth it.
So there you have it, six ways to increase your warehouse space!