How To Organize a Retail Stockroom: 7 Tips & Tools for Thrift Stores

How organized is your thrift store’s stockroom?

Because thrift stores receive so many different kinds of donations, the stockroom can get cluttered before you have a chance to sort them. This is why intentionally organizing your stockroom is key to keeping your shelves stocked consistently.

In this blog, we’ll explain how to organize a retail stockroom with seven simple tips and tools to help you keep everything in its place. By implementing a few changes, you can make navigating your stockroom more convenient for yourself and your employees, leading to faster inventory turnover and increased sales.

Let’s dive in.

1. Categorize and Sort Inventory

The first step to organizing your thrift store’s stockroom is to make a plan for how to categorize the items you store there. You likely have one or more customer-facing donation boxes. When these boxes fill up, you move the items to the stockroom to be sorted.

Due to the demands of running a business, you don’t always have time to sort everything immediately. For this reason, it’s important to create a donation sorting area within the stockroom where you can place newly donated items and sort them later.

From there, you can organize your inventory into logical categories. Many of your donations likely fit into one of these groups:

Clothing
Shoes
Toys
Electronics
Furniture
Home decor

Because many thrift stores stock a high volume of clothing, you can create additional categories within this group. You might divide items into women’s, men’s, youth clothing, and seasonal sections, for example. Understanding how to sort donations helps you decide the best way to set up your stockroom.

2. Use Color-Coded Tags

Many thrift stores use color-coded tags to sort different categories of items. Items in each group are marked with the same color tag, so they can be quickly identified and organized.

This system is also helpful for offering discounts on specific items only. If you want to put a 40% discount on clothes, and they all have a blue tag, you can let customers know that anything with a blue tag qualifies for the sale price. Color-based tagging makes it easier for customers to know what’s on sale and encourages them to buy more while the promotion is running.

Modern point of sale (POS) systems can assist with this task. Some thrift store-specific POS systems offer color-based discount tools, so you can easily mark down certain groups of products within your system. This simplifies the checkout process and creates a better customer experience.

3. Choose the Right Storage Equipment

With your inventory categories set, you need the right equipment to store it. Clothes are commonly hung on racks using hangers, while other items are sorted in bins. Transparent containers make it easy to see what’s inside them — which comes in handy if you need to find a specific item quickly.

If you’re using a lot of bins, opt for a large bin organizer. This type of storage fits nicely against the wall, saving space while giving you easy access to all of your bins. Bin organizers and other shelf-style storage units take advantage of vertical space rather than primarily occupying floor area.

Related Read: 7 Thrift Store Layout Ideas To Try Today

4. Add Clear Labels and Signage

Once you have your inventory organized with racks, bins, and shelves, it’s time to label everything. Even if you have a strong memory, a clearly labeled stockroom is easier for employees and volunteers to navigate and helps them locate items quickly.

Clearly mark boxes, bins, shelves, and sections of the clothing rack. These labels need to be visible and readable — which means it’s a better idea to print than handwrite them. You can also create larger signage for major sections of the stockroom, like the donation sorting area, the clothing section, or the furniture section.

5. Implement a Digital Inventory Management System

Thrift stores have unique inventory management needs, and a digital inventory management system helps you keep track of items both in your stockroom and on the sales floor. While standard retail stores tend to stock large quantities of the same product, thrift stores run on donations — which results in stocking hundreds of unique items. A thrift-specific POS system offers features to help you tag and sort what’s in your inventory with ease.

Inventory management software designed specifically for thrift stores allows you to instantly check inventory totals. Knowing what products you have informs what kinds of donations to seek, which discounts and promotions to offer, and what displays to set up on the sales floor.

These digital systems save you time and reduce errors that come with managing your data manually. Look for a cloud-based system you can access from any web-enabled device, so you can monitor your business from a phone, tablet, or laptop.

6. Create a Designated Seasonal Section

If your thrift store receives a lot of seasonal donations, it’s helpful to have a designated area for them in your stockroom.

Some of these items include:

Seasonal decorations
Winter clothing like coats, hats, and gloves
Summer clothing like tank tops, shorts, and flip flops
Pool gear

Depending on the volume of donations you receive, you can create storage compartments for individual seasons or store them all together.

Keep in mind that these items might be donated months ahead of their season, so having a designated seasonal area in the stockroom gives you a space to store them until it’s time to put them on the shelves. It also makes more efficient use of the sales floor by saving shelf space for in-demand items.

7. Prioritize Safety and Accessibility

Safety needs to be your top priority, and because of this, it’s essential to consider safety and accessibility as you organize your stockroom. It’s tempting to fill your stockroom with as much product as possible, but if it’s too full, it becomes a safety hazard.

Create aisles between racks, boxes, and storage bins, so you and your employees can easily move around the stockroom. Avoid stacking boxes and other items too high to prevent items from falling. To be extra cautious, instruct your employees to refrain from standing on unstable items, which can result in injury. If necessary, use sturdy ladders and stools to reach items on high shelves.

Stay vigilant to keep your stockroom safe. As items pile up, employees may start following unsafe practices without realizing it. Conduct regular safety audits to protect your employees and yourself.

How To Organize a Retail Stockroom With ThriftCart

Operating a thrift store is a demanding job, and when lots of donations start coming in, it can be difficult to know how to organize a retail stockroom. To get started, remember to have a plan in place, use the right equipment, and diligently sort items as they arrive. By doing so, you can keep your store’s stockroom neat and make it easy to find whatever you need.

An organized stockroom helps you replenish your shelves and put the right items out at the right time, increasing inventory turnover and sales. To optimize your inventory, you also need a POS system that includes inventory management software.

ThriftCart is an all-in-one cloud-based POS system built specifically for thrift stores. Users can easily catalog, sort, and track their inventory, as well as check totals from any web-enabled device. You can also create color-coded tags to help manage discounts across your store. With a full suite of both general and thrift-specific features, you have everything you need to run your business.

To see the difference ThriftCart can make for your store, schedule a demo today!