As a small business owner, your customers rely on you for everything tobacco — whether they’re stopping by to restock their favorite cigarette brand or looking for expert advice on finding the perfect cigar.
Keeping your shelves well-stocked is key to customer satisfaction and excellent sales numbers, but managing a wide array of brands — and hundreds, if not thousands, of individual cigars — can be a challenge.
That’s why we’ve put together our four top tips to help you tackle tobacco shop inventory management.
1. Replace Old School Inventory Management Techniques
If you’re still using manual processes to track your tobacco shop inventory, it’s time to bring your small business into the future! Counting inventory by hand takes up countless hours — time that would be much better spent connecting with customers and growing your business.
Another downside to manual inventory tracking is that it’s subject to human error. Inaccurate counts and misplaced items lead to lost sales and miscalculations that affect your bottom line.
Leveraging your point of sale (POS) system will transform your tobacco shop inventory management process. Your POS system traces your stock’s journey from the moment it arrives at your store to the minute a customer takes it home, giving you an accurate overview of what you have in stock at any given time.
Relying on your POS system will make inventory management quicker and more accurate, resulting in increased satisfaction for your customers and higher sales for you.
2. Leverage Tobacco-Specific Inventory Management Software
With the intricacies of tobacco shop inventory, a one-size-fits-all inventory management solution won’t cut it; you need a specialized tool tailored to the tobacco industry.
A few features to look out for on your search for the right inventory management system are carton-pack inventory management and case breaking. Carton-pack inventory tracking shows you at a glance how many total cases of a cigar or cigarette brand you have in stock, as well as the total number of individual units.
Case breaking is a similar feature that allows you to seamlessly sell a full carton of a product to a customer or sell one individual unit. Case breaking helps you give your customers exactly what they want, while keeping your sales and inventory records accurate.
Implementing a specialized POS system with tobacco-specific features like these is a major time-saver for you and your staff, giving you more time to spend on the sales floor providing top-notch customer service.
3. Streamline Inventory Counts With Custom Label Printing
If your tobacco shop inventory includes cigars, custom label printing is a must-have point of sale feature to streamline your inventory management process.
A tobacco-specific POS system allows you to print barcode labels that are perfectly sized for cigars, which is an especially helpful feature since cigars typically come in cases and aren’t individually labeled. Labeling your cigars speeds up cycle counts and improves the accuracy of your inventory records.
Cigar barcode labels also enhance the customer experience. As your customers browse your cigar selection, the labels give them more information about each cigar and its price, helping them narrow down their choices and find what they’re looking for.
When it’s time for your customers to check out with their selection of cigars, all your cashier has to do is scan the barcode. Labeling each cigar with a barcode replaces the tedious process of entering the product type and price manually — meaning that your customers will also enjoy shorter lines, faster transactions, and accurate pricing.
4. Optimize Your Inventory Using Sales Data
With new products constantly arriving on the tobacco scene, your inventory strategy needs to be able to keep up.
Your POS system can help you take a data-driven approach to tobacco shop inventory optimization, providing you with valuable insights into your customers’ ever-changing preferences and shopping habits.
Identifying your bestselling brands, slow-moving products, and sales trends with the help of easily digestible POS system reports will help you stock your shop with more of what customers want (and less of what they don’t).
As an added bonus, detailed sales reporting helps you make informed decisions about your overall operations and marketing strategy, ensuring that your tobacco shop is always evolving to meet your customers’ needs.
Take Charge of Your Tobacco Shop Inventory With Cigars POS
A well-stocked shop means happier customers and higher profits — which is why effective tobacco shop inventory management is key to the success of your small business.
With the right tools and processes in place, inventory management can be a breeze. Your first step to tackling tobacco shop inventory management is to find a POS system designed with your needs in mind.
Cigars POS is an all-in-one point of sale solution created for tobacco shop owners just like you. Along with robust inventory management features, Cigars POS has everything you need to streamline your operations and grow your business — including detailed performance analytics, a built-in customer loyalty program, convenient age verification, and more.
See Cigars POS in action by scheduling a live, personalized demo with one of our tobacco industry experts today!
